Quits fell by 1.3 million in 2025 while layoffs and discharges rose by 1.2 million, according to BLS JOLTS annual data. Total separations barely moved. This post covers the current employee turnover statistics from BLS, NSI Nursing Solutions, Gallup and Challenger, Gray & Christmas, each with its period and what it measures.
Employee Turnover Statistics at a Glance
Employee Turnover Statistics for 2025: What Actually Changed
The headline volume held steady between 2024 and 2025. The composition did not.
Quits accounted for 60.6% of the 62.8 million separations recorded in 2025, layoffs and discharges 33.8%, and other separations 5.6%. Fewer people chose to leave, and almost the same number were let go instead.
| U.S. labor turnover measure | 2025 level | Change from 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Hires | 63.0 million | −1.5 million |
| Total separations | 62.8 million | −251,000 |
| Quits | 38.0 million | −1.3 million |
| Layoffs and discharges | 21.2 million | +1.2 million |
| Other separations | 3.5 million | −224,000 |
| Job openings (annual average) | 7.1 million | −571,000 |
Source: BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, annual 2025, not seasonally adjusted
Hires and separations have converged. Hires totalled 63.0 million against 62.8 million separations in 2025; in 2024 the two figures were 64.5 million and 63.1 million.
The annual average quits rate landed at 2.0% in 2025, down from 2.8% in 2022. June 2026 monthly data holds the same line: a seasonally adjusted quits rate of 2.0%, a layoffs and discharges rate of 1.1%, and a total separations rate of 3.4%.
Employee Turnover Statistics by Industry
Benchmarking against a national average tells you almost nothing. June 2026 quits rates run from 0.4% to 4.7% depending on where you sit.
Accommodation and food services shed voluntary staff at more than five times the rate of financial activities. Information sits at 1.1%, below the total private rate of 2.4% — a reading that reflects a thin hiring market rather than contentment, a pattern also visible in return-to-office and remote work data for the same sectors.
| Industry | Quits rate | Total separations rate |
|---|---|---|
| Accommodation and food services | 4.7% | 5.8% |
| Leisure and hospitality | 4.3% | 5.5% |
| Retail trade | 3.2% | 4.4% |
| Professional and business services | 2.4% | 4.8% |
| Total private | 2.4% | 3.8% |
| Total nonfarm | 2.2% | 3.5% |
| Manufacturing | 1.6% | 2.5% |
| Information | 1.1% | 3.5% |
| Financial activities | 0.9% | 1.9% |
| Federal government | 0.4% | 0.9% |
Source: BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, June 2026, not seasonally adjusted monthly rates
Healthcare Employee Turnover Statistics and Cost per Exit
Hospitals publish the most precise turnover cost data of any sector. NSI’s 2026 report covers 527 hospitals in 40 states, 965,886 healthcare workers and 262,405 registered nurses, all reporting January through December 2025.
The national acute care hospital turnover rate reached 18.5% in 2025. Staff RN turnover reached 17.6%, a 1.2 percentage point rise that reversed three years of decline.
Turnover for one staff RN costs $60,090, and the average hospital lost $5.19 million to RN turnover in 2025, within a range of $4.2 million to $6.2 million. NSI puts the value of each percentage point of RN turnover at $295,000 a year for the average hospital.
Which Nursing Specialties Lose the Most Staff
Behavioral health tops the table at 22.5%. Critical care sits at 17.6%, exactly on the national RN average, which cuts against the usual assumption about high-acuity units.
Source: NSI Nursing Solutions, 2026 National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report, calendar year 2025
Employee Turnover Statistics by Tenure
Early tenure carries the cost. NSI reports that 22.7% of newly hired RNs left within a year, and first-year departures made up 29.0% of all RN separations in 2025.
Across all hospital roles the pattern is sharper: 29.5% of new hires left inside a year, and that group accounted for 35.6% of every separation. Voluntary resignations made up 94.9% of hospital separations, with retirement now the third most cited reason nurses gave for leaving.
Source: NSI Nursing Solutions, 2026 National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report, calendar year 2025
Employee Turnover Statistics and Engagement: Gallup 2026
Gallup recorded 31% of U.S. employees as engaged during the first half of 2026, unchanged from 2025, with 18% actively disengaged. The figures come from web surveys of 43,262 employed U.S. adults fielded in February and May 2026.
Engagement peaked at 36% in 2020. Gallup counts each percentage point as roughly 1.6 million workers and puts the U.S. cost of low engagement at about $2 trillion a year in lost productivity. Younger workers, hybrid workers and managers have declined most since 2020, which lines up with what US hybrid work adoption figures show about where flexibility policy has shifted hardest.
The manager layer is the number worth watching. Global manager engagement fell from 27% in 2024 to 22% in 2025, while individual contributors edged up from 18% to 19%.
| Gallup global measure | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| All employees engaged | 23% | 21% | 20% |
| Managers engaged | 30% | 27% | 22% |
| Individual contributors engaged | 18% | 18% | 19% |
Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026, survey years 2023–2025
Gallup estimates low engagement cost the world economy roughly $10 trillion in 2025, or 9% of global GDP. Meanwhile 52% of employees worldwide said it was a good time to find a job in their local area, up one point from 2024. Disengagement paired with job-market confidence is the standard setup for a quits rebound, and it explains why quiet quitting trends are tracked as a retention risk rather than a productivity footnote.
2026 Employee Turnover Trends: AI Named in a Quarter of Job Cuts
Announced cuts are running well below last year. U.S. employers announced 477,033 job cuts through July 2026, down 41% from 806,383 in the same period of 2025, when federal workforce reductions inflated the total.
July alone brought 33,429 cuts, the lowest monthly figure in two years. Hiring plans reached 107,500 for the year, up 25% from 86,132 through July 2025.
| Industry | Cuts, Jan–Jul 2026 | Cuts, Jan–Jul 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Technology | 149,023 | 89,251 |
| Transportation | 41,748 | 10,353 |
| Health Care/Products | 34,426 | 32,399 |
| Services | 23,942 | 53,438 |
| Government | 20,752 | 292,294 |
| All industries | 477,033 | 806,383 |
Source: Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Job Cut Announcement Report, January–July 2026
Technology announced 149,023 cuts through July, up 67% year over year, and now accounts for 31% of every cut announced in 2026. Artificial intelligence has led all stated reasons for five consecutive months, cited in 112,713 announcements, roughly 24% of the total. Challenger has recorded 184,538 AI-cited cuts since it began tracking the reason in 2023.
Source: Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Job Cut Announcement Report, January–July 2026
These are announcements, not completed separations, so they sit ahead of the JOLTS counts rather than duplicating them. Challenger notes the attribution itself is getting harder: it now tracks a separate “Technological Update (possibly AI)” category for cases where a company alludes to AI without tying it to the cuts. That ambiguity runs through most workplace automation adoption data as well.
The practical read for 2026: involuntary turnover is concentrated, not broad. Quits stay suppressed across the board while cuts cluster in a handful of white-collar sectors, which makes sector benchmarks more useful than national ones — the same logic that applies to remote work performance measurement and to four-day workweek retention results.
FAQ
What is the current U.S. quits rate?
The seasonally adjusted quits rate was 2.0% in June 2026, covering 3.2 million quits against 5.4 million total separations that month, per BLS JOLTS.
Which industry has the highest employee turnover?
Accommodation and food services, at a 4.7% monthly quits rate and a 5.8% total separations rate in June 2026, not seasonally adjusted, per BLS JOLTS.
Reddit threads say nobody is quitting anymore. Is that right?
Partly. Quits fell 1.3 million in 2025 to 38.0 million, but still made up 60.6% of all separations. Voluntary exits remain the majority of turnover, per BLS JOLTS.
What does employee turnover actually cost?
Healthcare publishes the cleanest figure: $60,090 per staff RN departure in 2025, costing the average hospital $5.19 million a year, per NSI Nursing Solutions.
How many 2026 layoffs does Reddit correctly attribute to AI?
AI was cited in 112,713 announced cuts through July 2026, about 24% of the 477,033 total, per Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It has led all stated reasons for five straight months.
Sources
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.htm
https://www.nsinursingsolutions.com/documents/library/nsi_national_health_care_retention_report.pdf
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/712433/employee-engagement-remains-flat-adoption-accelerates.aspx
https://www.challengergray.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Challenger-Report-July-2026.pdf
