Workers aren’t leaving their jobs. Here’s why that’s a problem

4 hours ago 3

Opinion

October 16, 2025 — 1.27pm

There’s an intriguing trend happening in the job market right now. In previous years, employees usually jumped from job to job, searching for better terms and loftier titles as they zigzagged their way up the career ladder. But we’re now starting to see the opposite of this, with workers staying in their jobs for longer.

This is referred to as “job hugging”, in which people choose stability and security over switching roles – and it’s one of the earliest signs of a jittery market.

Rather than find a new, more fulfilling job, workers are staying put, often to their own detriment.

If you’ve ever clung onto a role long past its expiry date, or because you’ve told yourself that things are going to get better one day, you’ve probably hugged your job too tightly.

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicated that just 7.7 per cent of workers – or 1.1 million people – changed jobs in the past year, down from a 10-year high of 9.6 per cent that we hit in 2023. One in 10 Australians have been in their current job for more than 20 years.

Some of the reasons for staying still might be as simple as you enjoy doing what you do and don’t feel any need to change, but there are increasing external factors that explain why people are preferring to not move anywhere.

Within Australia, there are increasing costs of living and slowing wage growth, plus a challenging hiring market that means the uncertainty of finding a new job with similar pay is a strong motivator to just stick it out.

As comfortable as repeating the same, familiar work routine over and over might be, the downsides often outweigh the positives.

Globally, there’s well-documented and growing apprehension about how AI will affect our workplaces, and this nervousness about job prospects is making many people second-guess what might happen when they leave the safety of what they know.

If you’ve got the point in your career where you’re thinking about switching jobs right now, you need to weigh up the benefits and costs of remaining where you are.

The upside of keeping the same job is that you are taking back some control in an era of uncertainty. There’s a lot of volatility in the world, so waiting until things settle down before making major financial moves can be an attractive option.

However, there are some serious risks to this strategy. The psychological toll of remaining in a workplace you really don’t want to be in can easily lead you into states of disengagement, stress and increased conflict with your colleagues.

This toxicity can spread throughout the business and undermine any good work to try to build a healthy culture. But as comfortable as repeating the same, familiar work routine over and over might sound, the reality is that the downsides often outweigh the positives.

One irony of this trend is the employers usually benefit from it, as they get staff with tenure and experience hanging around in unchanged conditions under the illusion of continuity.

In fact, some workplaces that pride themselves on low turnover might even be missing out on the real reasons to improve by thinking because they believe that staff stability is always a good thing.

Job hugging is a perfectly valid response to the ups and downs we’re all facing, but it’s an invisible danger when it’s at the expense of mental health if you find yourself overstaying your welcome at work.

Tim Duggan is author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com

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