Why Early Careers Employees Are Staying Put For Now: UK Career Progression Research

Retention among early careers employees looks healthy right now but that calm can be misleading. With a suppressed job market and low open vacancies, this is giving people fewer places to go, not fewer reasons to leave. The real test of whether organisations have earned their talent’s loyalty is what happens to employee career progression once conditions ease.

The numbers behind the stability illusion

LHH’s Building future talent that stays and performs UK research, based on 1,409 early careers professionals found that 42% of early careers employees say they are very likely to stay with their employer over the next 12 months. This looks positive until you look at what’s driving it. In LHH’s Career Barometer 2025, 47% of the same group felt more inclined to change jobs than they did the year before. That trend has now reversed, not because employers have improved, but because the external market has tightened.

The reasons people give for staying confirm this.

• Only 15% say their main reason for staying is alignment with their organisation’s purpose, mission or values.
• 21% cite the lack of opportunity elsewhere as the main reason for staying
• 13% say uncertainty about changing roles is what’s keeping them in place.

If, and when, market conditions do improve, these employees will start actively looking for new opportunities and they will join the 12% of early careers surveyed who said they are already planning to leave within the next 12 months, regardless of market conditions.

“Today’s early careers employees are acutely aware of the difficult job market they currently face. But the antidote to this is creating those positive moments at work, helping people feel truly valued, and working collaboratively together with employees to build businesses where people can grow and talent is nurtured.”
Pauline Muldoon, Practice Leader Career Development & Mobility, LHH

Download the full Building future talent that stays and performs research

Career progression is the hidden variable

When early careers employees are asked what would make them feel their development genuinely matters to their organisation, 38% of early careers professionals cite career growth opportunities as one of the main factors keeping them in their current role. Other factors include:

• Competitive pay (30%)
• A supportive manager (27%)
• Access to learning and development (25%).

However 28% of early careers employees say they do not see a clear or realistic path for progression within their current organisation. In a stronger job market, that figure would translate directly into turnover but right now, it’s accumulating quietly.

This is the progression gap at the core of the stability illusion. The market is suppressing the visible consequences of a problem that hasn’t gone away. Early careers employees without a clear path forward are not becoming more patient, there are waiting for the market to improve before making their next career move.

The FOMO influence – one departure can shift a whole cohort

LHH’s research found that early careers employees are not assessing their own progression in isolation. 45%of early careers employees say that seeing peers leave makes them consider leaving too. But a separate 45% say a peer’s departure affects their confidence in the organisation itself, arguably a more serious signal.

The first group is weighing up their own options. The second group is revising their assessment of whether the organisation is worth staying in at all.

When a peer leaves and visibly moves into a role with more responsibility or clearer progression than they had internally, it doesn’t read as one person’s good news. It reads as proof of what was possible all along, just not here. That perception spreads quickly within early careers cohorts, which tend to be closely networked and actively comparing notes on how careers are developing relative to peers.

This builds the case for employers to build and show internal career opportunities to their talent to demonstrate their intent and commitment to the development of their talent.

The conversation gap compounds the risk

44% of early careers say they are comfortable having career development conversations with their manager, but haven’t had it yet. And a further 10% say they don’t feel able to ask for that conversation at all. Combined, over half of early careers employees who have not had a meaningful conversation about their progression, either because the opportunity hasn’t been created, or because the culture doesn’t make it feel safe to ask.

With career growth opportunities cited by 38% as a core retention driver, and the market currently masking how many employees would leave if they could, those unmade conversations represent a significant and largely invisible attrition risk sitting inside the organisation right now.

Acting before the market forces the issue

If organisations want to move beyond this stability illusion, they need to focus on creating reasons for people to stay which can be achieved by:

• Creating visibility around internal career progression - help early careers employees understand how they can grow within the organisation.
• Encouraging regular career conversations touch points throughout the year.
• Equipping line managers to support development and ensuring they can guide employees through their early career journeys.

Internal career mobility can be built around capability and readiness rather than headcount. Now is the time when employers can actively invest in internal career development opportunities which, even in a slow hiring market, investment now can be far less costly than rebuilding a cohort of new early careers professionals after it exits together.

Download the full Building future talent that stays and performs research

What do early careers professionals really want from their career?

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Frequently asked questions

Is early careers retention as stable as it looks?

Not necessarily. While 42% of early careers employees say they’re very likely to stay over the next 12 months, LHH’s research shows that 21% are staying due to a lack of opportunities elsewhere and 13% due to uncertainty about changing roles. That’s more than a third staying for market reasons, not because of commitment to their employer.

How many early careers employees are already planning to leave?

12% — more than 1 in 10 — say they intend to leave their role within the next 12 months, regardless of market conditions.

How does one person leaving affect the rest of the team?

45% of early careers employees say a peer’s departure makes them consider leaving too, and a separate 45% say it affects their confidence in the organisation. Both are distinct risks: one drives individual job-searching, the other erodes broader trust in the organisation’s future.

How many early careers employees don’t see a clear progression path?

28% of early careers employees say they do not see a clear or realistic path for progression within their current organisation.

How many early careers employees haven’t had a career development conversation?

44% say they’re comfortable discussing their career with their manager but haven’t yet had that conversation, and a further 10% don’t feel able to ask for one at all — meaning 54% haven’t had a meaningful career progression conversation with their manager.

What do early careers employees say keeps them engaged?

38% of early careers professionals cite career growth opportunities as one of the main factors keeping them in their role — the second most cited driver after flexibility and work-life balance, and ahead of pay, manager support, and learning and development access.