Our 2023 Word of the Year Has Staying Power

It’s that time of year when word nerds around the world gather, comb through the data, and pick a Word of the Year. Merriam-Webster chose authentic as its 2023 word, because in an era of deep fakes and post-truth, what could be more golden than the truth? The Oxford University Press swerved in a different direction, choosing rizz — short for charisma — a word that was popularized by social media and Spider-Man actor Tom Holland, who claimed in an interview that he has no rizz. (Tom, we beg to differ.)

In the spirit of the season, we carefully selected a Word of the Year for the talent industry. And our word is the . . . drumroll, please . . . Big Stay.

Why the Big Stay defines 2023  

Admittedly, this word (phrase, really) sits on some pretty big — yes, maybe even great — shoulders. It grew out of  the Great Resignation and Great Reshuffle, segued into the Great Regret, and finally settled upon the Big Stay. Simply put, it means employees have slowed down on job-hopping and are sticking around. 

Eighteen months ago, could any of us have imagined that this was where we’d land? At the height of the Great Reshuffle — between June 2021 and December 2022 — more than 4 million employees quit their jobs. Every month. And that was just in the U.S.

It was a dizzying party, with employees in the driver’s seat. Candidates wanted flexibility. They wanted remote work. They wanted great pay and even better benefits. And, a lot of the time, that’s exactly what they got. 

But as the fall of 2022 dawned, everyone got splashed with cold water and sobered up. Layoffs started mounting in the tech sector. The global economy stumbled. Companies that couldn’t do enough for employees suddenly froze hiring, slowed pay increases, and jettisoned desirable perks like tuition assistance, free cab rides, and — egad! — office coffee. When layoffs came, recruiters were often among the first to be cut. 

Job-hopping became a less lucrative pursuit. According to research from ADP, pay increases for job switchers peaked in June of 2022 at 16.4%, but then dipped to 13.2% this year, the lowest pace of growth since November 2021. 

So, employees are now doing the workplace equivalent of crawling into their jammies, curling up on the couch, and staying put. LinkedIn data shows that the rate of people staying in roles for less than a year has sharply declined, down nearly 30% compared with last year. 

Why the Big Stay may actually be a good thing 

While the Big Stay is a whole lot more staid and less frenetic than the Great Reshuffle, it’s also a boon for companies as retention goes from a pain point to a point of pride. 

The Big Stay also provides companies with incentives to upskill their employees — which benefits both employees and companies. A Financial Services Skills Commission found that it’s 2.5x more expensive to hire a new employee than to reskill a current one. 

In other words, the Big Stay can also be a Big Win. 

Honorable mentions: Other words we considered 

In such an action-packed year, it wasn’t easy choosing one word to capture all that we experienced. While the Big Stay seems to sum up the year most succinctly, we also considered these candidates: 

• The Great Regret, which describes how employees feel after they’ve left for greener pastures only to find that their new role isn’t quite the leisurely stroll they expected. Recent research from Paychex found that 80% of people who quit their roles during the Great Resignation later regretted it. 
• Rage applying, which is the act of applying to as many jobs as possible out of frustration or anger. It’s often the precursor to a great regret. 
• And finally: Lazy girl job, a term popularized by TikToker Gabrielle Judge to mean a job that is remote, high-paying, and nontechnical, and, by some accounts, not terribly taxing. We love this cheeky, irreverent term, though it kind of belies Gabrielle’s true meaning: a job where employees are treated like human beings with lives outside of work. To us, that sounds like the kind of job that would make workers want to stay.