“Job Hugging” Is Nonsense. It's Called Staying Employed, Like a Grown-Up
“Job hugging” sounds cute. It’s actually just what people have always done in a shaky economy: keep a job because life costs money.
Every decade before LinkedIn turned into a digital self-help convention, going to work, collecting a paycheck, and staring blankly into the soulless eye of a breakroom microwave was just called life. You weren’t navigating a macroeconomic trend. You weren’t part of a workforce movement. You were simply... employed. But now? Now you’re apparently “job hugging.”
This isn’t satire, though it reads like it. According to corporate consulting firms, you’re not just staying in your job because the rent exists. No, you’re “hugging” it. As if clutching a half-decent salary with both arms while inflation gnaws at your grocery budget is some sort of emotional breakthrough.
This “job hugging” talk is less a revelation and more a linguistic pivot from reality. It tries to paint financial pragmatism as a trend, when it’s just the same practical decision millions have always made. It suggests that staying employed during uncertain times is somehow new, as if our grandparents didn’t live through actual depressions while doing far worse jobs.
There’s nothing radical about staying employed when the market is twitchy. The only shocking part is how easily we’ve accepted this as novel.
We Regret to Inform You That You’re Hugging Your Job
So what is “job hugging,” really?
A warm, comforting embrace between you and your health insurance card?
A silent pact with your mortgage?
The latest HR marketing spin designed to make not quitting sound brave and intentional rather than financially pragmatic?
Apparently, all of the above.
This term, pulled from the imagination of Korn Ferry consultants in 2025, somehow elevates the basic act of staying employed into a trend worthy of analysis. Never mind that this is what people have done for generations: held onto their jobs during slowdowns because the alternative was, and still is, terrifying. The difference now is that it’s being framed like a psychological case study, as though enduring your job in uncertain times is a symptom to be diagnosed and not, you know, adulthood.
The language is oddly affectionate. You’re not working. You’re hugging. Because obviously, that’s what we’ve all wanted in a job: intimacy. A sense of closeness. Mutual affection with your direct deposit.
It does have a ring to it, sure. “Job hugging” sounds quirkier than “doing what you need to survive in a volatile economy.” But let’s not be fooled. This isn’t some seismic cultural shift. It’s just regular people doing what they’ve always done when the economy cools off: sitting tight, and collecting their check.
The Myth of the Purpose-Driven, Passion-Fueled Corporate Life
For decades, corporate messaging has sold us a dream wrapped in a mission statement. Find a job you love, they said, and you’ll never work a day in your life. In reality, most people found a job they could endure and then worked every single day of their lives. It turns out passion doesn’t pay off your student loans, and no amount of “purpose” will stop your landlord from raising the rent.
Still, the myth persisted. Companies poured millions into employer branding campaigns designed to convince us that their accounting department was an ecosystem of fulfillment and self-actualization. They installed ping pong tables and wellness webinars and thought that somehow added up to meaning.
Enter “job hugging,” which now dares to imply that staying in a job for practical reasons is evidence of some kind of defeat. As if choosing predictable income over emotional alignment is selling out. It is not. It is survival. It is the grown-up version of choosing to eat beans on toast because your fridge is empty and payday is Thursday.
None of this is new. Most workers have never expected their job to be a source of spiritual elevation. They expect it to be a source of income. That was the trade: time for money, not soul for enlightenment.
Framing job hugging as a reaction to loss completely misunderstands the deal most people made with work long ago. This is about remembering that a dream job was always a luxury, not a baseline.
So no, it’s not a crisis of passion. It’s just people doing what they’ve always done. They’re being adults. And that’s not news. It’s life.
The Great Stay: We Had One Wild Year and Called It a Trend
The Great Resignation was that blip in workforce history when everyone suddenly decided they were too good for their jobs. Between 2021 and 2022, it felt like half the internet was announcing their exit from corporate life, launching Substacks, posting “I’ve got news” LinkedIn essays, or opening Etsy shops.
The narrative?
Work had changed forever.
Employees were empowered.
We were in a labor market renaissance.
And then the music stopped.
Interest rates crept up.
Companies stopped hiring like their investors were handing out Monopoly money.
The cost of eggs rivaled luxury goods.
Tech layoffs rolled in like a slow, awkward wave.
Those $30K raises you used to get just for replying to a recruiter’s email? Gone.
Suddenly, staying at your job was no longer the punchline to a joke about missed opportunities. It was the adult thing to do.
And voilà: “job hugging.”
This wasn’t a new kind of loyalty. People didn’t suddenly fall in love with their middle manager or rediscover their passion for slide decks. They just read the room. The room said, “If you jump now, there's no trampoline.”
It turns out the Great Resignation wasn’t a long-term revolution. It was a heatwave. And now we’re back to regular weather with people choosing security over risk, and predictability over fantasy.
Let’s not confuse a swing in conditions with a shift in identity. “Job hugging” is just the professional equivalent of staying inside because there’s a storm outside and your roof, while leaky, hasn’t collapsed yet.
Talent Hoarding, Career Cushioning, and Other Linguistic Gymnastics
At some point, corporate culture turned into a competitive sport of vocabulary creation. It’s not enough to describe normal work behaviors anymore. Everything must have a quirky label, a LinkedIn explainer post, and a podcast episode with soft jazz playing under it. Enter: job hugging, the latest addition to the workplace jargon circus.
Let’s line up the contenders.
Quiet quitting: also known as doing exactly what your job description says. For some reason, this was treated as subversive.
Career cushioning: secretly preparing for a new job while pretending to enjoy your current one.
Talent hoarding: when managers hoard team members like toilet paper in a pandemic, because they’re terrified that once people move internally, the whole department might collapse.
Job hugging: staying in your job because rent, groceries, and childcare exist. How edgy.
What’s amazing here is not the behaviors themselves. It’s the fact that we keep rebranding survival instincts like they’re social phenomena. As if workers choosing stability or self-protection is breaking news. As if everyone didn’t grow up knowing their parents stayed in jobs they didn’t love because that’s what paid for braces and Christmas.
The more elaborate our vocabulary gets, the more divorced we become from reality. Work has been romanticized into a lifestyle, a personal brand, an identity to be “optimized.” But at its core, it’s still work. The original deal was never about purpose. It was about money in exchange for time. That’s it.
The only real phenomenon here is our growing refusal to admit that. And so we give it names. Lots of them. Because heaven forbid we just say: “I need the paycheck.”
So what are we really looking at with all this breathless “job hugging” coverage? It’s not a revolution. It’s just a return to the norm. The short-lived fantasy that every worker was one vision board away from dream-job bliss has fizzled, and now we’re back to reality, where most people keep a job for the same reason they always have: it pays.
We should stop treating stability like it's some kind of moral failure. Choosing to stay at your job is not a fascinating new case study in workforce behavior. It’s a sign that people are doing what they’ve always done when the economic mood shifts: playing it safe, paying their bills, and maybe squeezing in a vacation if the PTO gods allow it.
Most people aren’t “hugging” their job. They’re just clocking in, doing their work, and trying to make it through without losing their health insurance or their minds.
That’s normal.
So the next time someone calls themselves a “job hugger,” just smile and nod. Then ask them how their newsletter is going and whether they’ve finally monetized their personal brand.
At StratEx - Indonesia Business Advisory we advise leaders on how to align strategy with what work really is in 2025. Contact us to build people strategies grounded in real behavior, not trend-driven headlines.