Job Hugging in Singapore: Why So Many Workers Are Too Scared to Quit (2026)

If your job hasn't felt right for a while but you haven't done anything about it, you're not alone, and there's a name for it now: job hugging. It's the opposite of the pandemic-era "job hopping" and the Great Resignation. Instead of leaving for better pay or a better fit, people are gripping onto the job they already have, even when they're unhappy in it, because the alternative feels riskier than staying put.

The term itself is new. Korn Ferry is credited with coining it in August 2025, describing workers "holding onto their jobs for dear life," and it spread fast: Fast Company and Business Insider picked it up within weeks, and it was being discussed on The Daily Show and in The New York Times by that autumn. What isn't new is the underlying behaviour, and the Singapore data backs up that this isn't just an HR buzzword floating over from the US news cycle.

What is "job hugging", exactly?

Job hugging means staying in a job you're disengaged from, or that offers little room to grow, because the job market feels too uncertain to risk leaving. It's driven by fear rather than loyalty. In a healthy labour market, people stay because they're genuinely motivated and committed. Job hugging is different: you stay because leaving feels dangerous, not because staying feels good.

In the US, where the term originated, the numbers moved fast. ResumeBuilder.com found the share of workers who self-identify as job huggers jumped from 45% in August 2025 to 57% by February 2026, in about six months. Monster's 2025 Job Hugging Report, a survey of 1,004 currently employed US workers, found 75% plan to stay in their current role through 2027, and 63% expect job hugging to grow further in 2026.

Singapore's own numbers say the same thing

This isn't just an imported American trend. Singapore's Ministry of Manpower Labour Market Report for Q1 2026 shows the average monthly resignation rate fell to just 1%, a historical low, down from 1.3% in Q4 2025. The financial and insurance sector hit its lowest-ever resignation rate of 0.6%, and food & beverage (1.8%) and retail (1.4%) both fell to multi-year lows. At the same time, the average monthly recruitment rate also dropped, to 1.6% from 2.0% the quarter before.

Put plainly: fewer people are quitting, and employers are hiring more selectively too. MOM's own read on this is that it reflects cautious employee behaviour amid uncertainty, not strong job satisfaction. That's job hugging showing up in official labour statistics, not just survey sentiment.

Why Singapore workers are hanging on so tight

ManpowerGroup's Global Talent Barometer surveyed 515 workers in Singapore between 1 September and 1 October 2025, and the results capture the job-hugging paradox almost exactly: 60% intend to stay with their current employer, while 73% are actively looking for new opportunities at the same time. People are searching, but not jumping.

• 39% think they could lose their job within the next 6 months.
• 58% fear AI could replace them within 2 years, though this was actually down 2 points from 2025.
• Confidence in the job market fell too: the survey's Confidence Index dropped 3 points to 71%.
• Only 69% feel confident with the latest technology at work, down 9 points, even though 52% now use AI regularly on the job.

This lines up with Monster's findings on why people stay put globally: 27% cite pay as their top reason, 26% cite job security. It's rarely that people love their job more this year. It's that the cost of being wrong about a move feels higher.

Staying isn't exactly safe either

Here's the part that makes job hugging a genuinely bad deal for a lot of people: staying put isn't protecting their wellbeing. ManpowerGroup's Singapore data found 72% of workers recently experienced burnout, and 53% report significant daily stress. The leading causes were general stress (34%), heavy workloads (28%) and job insecurity itself (24%), so the fear that keeps people hugging their job is also part of what's burning them out.

It also isn't evenly spread. 73% of Gen Z men reported high daily stress, compared with just 22% of Baby Boomer men. The survey's Well-Being Index sits at 62%, down a point, while its Job Satisfaction Index actually rose slightly to 56%, suggesting people have made an uneasy peace with roles they're not necessarily happy in.

Retrenchments are rising too, and it's not spread evenly

The fear isn't abstract. MOM's Q1 2026 report also shows retrenchments rose to 3,830 in Q1 2026, up from 3,690 in Q4 2025 (an incidence of 1.6 per 1,000 employees, which MOM notes is still within non-recessionary norms). Two groups took the sharpest hit:

• Degree holders saw retrenchment incidence rise from 2.6 to 3.1 per 1,000 resident employees, the highest of any qualification group, concentrated in professional and knowledge-intensive sectors.
• Workers aged 50 to 59 were hit hardest by age group, also rising from 2.8 to 3.1 per 1,000.
• PMETs (Professionals, Managers, Executives & Technicians) held the highest retrenchment incidence of any occupational group at 2.6 per 1,000, unchanged from the previous quarter.

There is a genuinely hopeful number in the same report, though: the share of retrenched residents who found a new job within six months has risen for three straight quarters, from 55.4% in Q3 2025, to 57.4% in Q4 2025, to 60.7% in Q1 2026. Losing a role is still landing people back on their feet more often than it did a year ago, even if it doesn't feel that way from the inside.

Does job hugging actually protect your career?

Not clearly, according to the people doing it. In Monster's survey, only 25% feel more satisfied citing security and value, while 27% feel less satisfied and "stuck." On career growth specifically, 47% say job hugging has had little effect either way, 27% see it as limiting, and 26% believe it's actually building their expertise. There's no clean consensus, which is itself the honest answer: it depends heavily on what you do with the time you stay.

It's also worth naming the skepticism directly, in the interest of not overselling a trend piece: some workplace commentators argue "job hugging" is mostly a repackaged label for ordinary risk-averse behaviour that has always existed, and that leaning on the term distracts from real structural issues like slow productivity growth and disengagement. That criticism has some merit. But whatever you call it, the underlying numbers, Singapore's resignation rate at a record low, rising retrenchments concentrated among degree holders and older PMETs, and burnout climbing at the same time, are real and measured, not just a narrative.

What to actually do if you're job hugging

Career experts quoted in Monster's research point to a few concrete moves rather than "just quit" or "just stay quiet and wait":

• Search passively while still employed. Vicki Salemi, Monster's career expert, recommends looking at what's out there without pressure to act on it immediately, so you have real information instead of guessing at your options.
• Use your current role to build skills you don't yet have. If you're staying anyway, staying passively is the worst version of it. Treat the time as runway, not a holding pattern.
• Look inside your own company too. Dmitrii Anikin (SalaryGuide) suggests exploring internal mobility, secondments or new responsibilities before assuming the only options are "stay exactly as you are" or "leave."
• Treat hesitation as normal, not a red flag. Preparation, not certainty, is what actually reduces the fear driving job hugging in the first place.

What would actually get people to move, according to Monster's respondents: 28% want higher pay and benefits, 18% want better work-life balance, 14% want remote options. In other words, most people aren't waiting for a perfect role, they're waiting for a role that's clearly better on the terms that matter to them, and they're not going to find that by not looking.

If you want to explore quietly, without the effort of managing five job sites

The advice above only works if looking around doesn't become its own second job. That's the exact gap ApplyLah is built for: it pulls Singapore roles from MyCareersFuture and more than 25 company career pages and ATS platforms into one feed, scores how well each fits your résumé, and tailors a résumé and cover letter for the roles actually worth your time, so passive searching doesn't mean opening a dozen tabs a week. You still review and submit every application yourself, nothing goes out in your name automatically. If you're curious what else is quietly hiring right now beyond the obvious boards, our guide to where to find jobs in Singapore in 2026 covers the sources most people miss.

The bottom line

Job hugging in Singapore isn't just a borrowed American headline. MOM's own numbers show it: resignations at a record low, recruitment slowing too, and retrenchments climbing specifically among degree holders, PMETs and workers in their 50s. At the same time, burnout is up and confidence is down, so staying put isn't the safe, comfortable choice it might look like from the outside. If you're hugging your job right now, the data suggests that's a reasonable, common response to a genuinely uncertain market, not a personal failure, but the workers who come out ahead are the ones who keep quietly looking anyway.