Workers Cling to Jobs Amid Hiring Slowdown and Rising Layoffs: The 2026 Employment Squeeze

Hold tight—the job market's shifting gears. Hiring's hitting the brakes while layoffs tap the accelerator. Workers aren't quitting; they're digging in. It's a white-knuckle ride for job security.

The Great Resignation? More like The Great Retention.

Why the grip? Uncertainty. When the music slows, you don't leave the chair. Promotions freeze. Raises stall. The side-hustle economy gets a fresh look. Everyone's recalculating their personal runway.

Tech, finance, retail—no sector's immune. The domino effect's real. One hiring freeze signals caution across the board. It's corporate herd mentality at its finest.

Forget quiet quitting. This is loud staying. Employees are optimizing for survival, not satisfaction. Loyalty's back—not from passion, but from pragmatism. A cynical take? It's the same old cycle: companies over-hire in the boom, over-fire in the gloom, and act shocked every single time. Somewhere, a management consultant is charging six figures to explain that maybe you shouldn't do that.

The bottom line: When the tide goes out, you hold onto your raft. Even if it's leaky.

Key Takeaways

• Fewer than 16% of workers in February said they would voluntarily leave their jobs within the next year, the lowest level recorded by the New York Federal Reserve survey in more than a decade.
• Recent data shows that the quit rate has fallen from its peak during the “Great Resignation” of 2022, as fewer job openings are available. 
• The decline in worker confidence comes as employers trimmed their payrolls.

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Workers are clinging to their jobs as the labor market slows.

Employers shed jobs in February, making workers reluctant to leave their positions, according to a newly released New York Federal Reserve consumer survey. The expected quit rate, which measures the probability of workers leaving their jobs voluntarily in the next year, decreased by nearly 3 percentage points to 15.9% in February.

It’s the lowest level recorded in more than a decade, and economists say it shows that workers are losing confidence in the labor market.

“Many workers are accustomed to switching jobs every three to five years or so,” wrote Cory Stahle, economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. “If they’re ready to move on and the opportunities aren’t there, they feel stuck.”

Worker Confidence Fades

The drop in confidence comes after employers shed 92,000 jobs in February, raising fears about labor market weakness. In addition, 2025 was the slowest year for job creation outside of a recession in more than two decades. 

Why This Matters for the Economy

A low quit rate signals that workers feel less confident about finding better opportunities, which can slow wage growth. When employees stay put and hiring cools, it often leads to a broader economic slowdown that can weigh on the economy.

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A weak quit rate is one factor behind the “low-hire, low-fire” conditions that defined the labor market last year. Recent data has shown that the quit rate has fallen from the highs of the “Great Resignation” in 2022, when 3% of workers voluntarily left their jobs, to 2% in the latest job openings report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

The same report showed a 3.3% hiring rate for employers, also around the lowest levels seen in more than a decade.

“Part of the decline in hiring activity might be due to greater worker caution rather than solely to employer restraint,” wrote Anthony Chan, a former economist for JPMorgan Chase.

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There are several factors driving down quit rates, Chan wrote. One is the impact of immigration enforcement. Fewer migrant workers reduce the labor supply, which in turn affects employers' hiring plans.

With fewer jobs available, workers are less likely to quit the one they have. Workers are facing weaker prospects, with job openings down from their 2022 highs.

“Workers see fewer attractive opportunities in the labor market than they did during the peak of the post-pandemic expansion,” Chan wrote.