PEOPLE

IS BECOMING A LOST ART. Four years after the Great Resignation peaked, the labour market of 2026 has frozen over. Hiring is slow, layoffs are rare and the door has all but stopped revolving. Eagle Hill Consulting’ s Employee Retention Index ended 2025 at 105.0, near the highest reading in its history, and among millennials – once the defining job-hoppers – it sits higher still at 115.4.“ Employees are anchoring onto the stability of current roles as they see fewer viable external opportunities,” says Melissa Jezior, President and CEO of the Virginia-based consultancy Eagle Hill Consulting, whose index has tracked the freeze from the start. Companies spent a decade bribing people to stay: signing bonuses, counteroffers, the occasional ping-pong table. The freeze now does that work for free, which leaves a stranger problem: a full office that has stopped caring. The task is no longer stopping people from leaving, but getting the ones who stayed to care again.

Melissa Jezior President and CEO Eagle Hill Consulting

76 November 2026