Job hugging: why you’re staying in a job you hate

You open the same résumé file on Sunday night. You close it. You tell yourself you’ll start looking after the quarter ends, after the holidays, after this project, after you’ve saved a little more.

You are not lazy. You are not scared of work. You’re doing arithmetic that most people on the other side of the desk never have to do.

People are calling it job hugging. I call it a rational response to a market that stopped paying people to move. I’ll explain what the numbers say, what staying costs, and how to stay on your terms. Before you decide, see what raise to expect in 2027. The cause is a stuck job market where nobody hires or fires.

What is job hugging?

Job hugging is holding onto a job you’d otherwise leave, because the market makes leaving feel dangerous. It isn’t loyalty. Loyalty is when you stay because you want to. Hugging is when you stay because the door out looks like a cliff.

It shows up in the data. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent report, workers quit at a rate of just 1.9% in August 2026, about 3.1 million people, while employers hired 5.2 million. Those are the numbers of a market where almost nobody is moving. A separate poll cited by Fortune found that 65% of employees feel stuck in their current positions, rising to 73% in tech, and 75% of workers in another survey said they plan to stay put until at least 2027. Some people hire an executive coach for this decision.

You are in a crowd. The crowd just isn’t talking.

Why does leaving feel so risky right now?

Because the evidence says it is riskier than it was. The September jobs report showed employers adding only 29,000 jobs, with unemployment at 4.2%. About 1.9 million people had been out of work for 27 weeks or more, 27.1% of all unemployed workers. When a search stretches that long, the savings don’t. Know your plan before it happens, see the first 48 hours after a layoff.

If you’re the first in your family in a professional job, the risk isn’t abstract. It’s your rent, your car note, the relatives who text you when something breaks, the fact that you got here without a safety net and you know what it feels like to lose the floor. Someone with a parent who can cover two months can afford to quit and look. Someone without that has to be more careful, and being careful isn’t a character flaw.

So here’s what I’d tell you plainly: you are allowed to stay. You don’t owe anyone a dramatic exit.

What does staying actually cost?

It costs something, and you should know the price before you decide to keep paying it.

In the same Resume Now research Fortune reported, 58% of workers said their biggest career regret was staying in a bad job too long, compared with 38% who regretted quitting. That’s one survey from a résumé company and it doesn’t say how many people it asked, so treat it as a signal, not a law. But it matches what I see: people rarely regret the move. They regret the extra two years. A relocation can force the choice, see your company is moving to Texas.

The money cost is real too. Pay rises usually go to people who negotiate or move. Across employers, the average planned raise for 2027 is 3.2% for merit increases, which roughly keeps pace with prices and not much more. A new offer in a good moment can beat that by a wide margin. I break the gap down in my piece on how to negotiate a raise, because if you’re staying, you should at least be getting paid for it.

And then there’s the cost nobody puts in a spreadsheet: what a bad fit does to your sleep, your patience and your sense that you’re headed somewhere.

How to stay without getting stuck

The goal isn’t to hug the job. It’s to stay employed while you build the ability to leave. Here’s the order I’d work in.

Know your number. Add up your essential monthly expenses, then multiply by the length of a realistic search. Plan for at least six months, since 27.1% of unemployed people have now been out of work 27 weeks or more. That’s the cushion that turns “I can’t leave” into “I can leave in a year.”

Keep a record. Wins, numbers, thank-you emails, projects you led. Updating a résumé takes an hour when you’ve been writing things down, and a month when you haven’t.

Ask for the raise or the scope before you assume it won’t come. Staying doesn’t mean staying silent. If they won’t move on pay or title, you’ve learned something, and you’ve learned it while still collecting a check.

Keep a low-effort pipeline. One conversation a week. One recruiter reply. One person you reach out to. Small, steady, no drama. I lay out a longer plan in the career blueprint for exactly this season.

Watch for the other danger. Staying isn’t safe if the job is shrinking around you. If your projects are disappearing and your calendar is going quiet, read my piece on quiet cutting before you assume you’re safe.

When staying stops making sense

Stay if the job is tolerable, the paycheck is protecting something that matters, and you’re building toward a move. Go, or at least start moving faster, if the job is hurting your health, if your manager is treating you differently after you raised a concern, or if the role is shrinking toward nothing.

If you can’t tell which side of that line you’re on, book a free 20-minute conversation and bring your numbers. We’ll work out whether you’re hugging a job or just paying the price of a plan.

McKinley holds a J.D. but is not a licensed attorney. Articles here are general information, not legal advice. For your specific situation, talk with an employment attorney.

Data current as of September 2026. Sources are linked where each figure appears.