Why Today’s Job Market Quickly Breaks Your CRM

This article breaks down job hopping and job hugging with real labor market stats and shows how quickly your ideal prospects change roles or companies. It explains why static B2B contact lists get old and what teams should do to keep outreach aligned with the actual labor market.

TL;DR

• In 2021 about 47.8 million Americans quit their jobs according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

• Recently we are seeing the opposite. The quit rate has dropped to around 2 percent, and some sources now describe workers as job hugging or staying in their current roles out of fear. New York Post

• Median employee tenure in the United States is only 3.9 years, and in the private sector it is 3.5 years, the lowest in decades. Bureau of Labor Statistics

• For sales and related roles the median tenure is about 3.3 years and multiple studies show that the average sales rep tenure is around 18–20 months. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

• With so much labor change, a static B2B contact list ages very fast. Even if emails don’t bounce yet, teams, reorganizations, companies, roles, and decision rights can change.

Your ICP Keeps Moving In The Labor Market

The labor market is always changing. People leave jobs, quit, they get promoted, teams merge, companies merge, titles change. It’s a very messy reality.

That’s why you shouldn't treat B2B contacts as fixed. They’re always changing and should be treated as such. Over the last few years we’ve seen the labor market swing between two extremes. First we saw job hopping in 2021-2022 where people felt confident to find new jobs. Then we saw job hugging from 2023-2025 where people kept jobs they did not like because of market fragility. These phases are bad for static B2B data and can affect the accuracy of your contact list in different ways.

How Job Hopping Changed the Labor Market

Great Resignation Job Change Statistics

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), about 47.8 million Americans quit their jobs in 2021 which set a new record for annual quits in its 2022 report on job openings and quits. Bureau of Labor Statistics

BLS also reported that quits hit the highest point at a record 4.5 million in November 2021 and stayed near 4 million per month for most of late 2021 and into 2022.

These statistics aren’t just one company. It was the entire U.S. economy. It affected every sector, every region, and every type of job. If you held a large database or list of B2B contacts through that period, a big chunk of your ICP would have moved to new roles within other teams or new companies.

Why so many workers changed jobs

People changed jobs for many different reasons but these are the most impactful:

• According to a survey by Pew Research Center, 63% of U.S. workers who quit in 2021 said it was because of low pay, 63% said there was no chance of advancement, and 57% said it was because they felt disrespected at work.

• Remote work opened more options across different regions. Bureau of Labor Statistics

• Demand for talent was strong and many industries, especially tech and knowledge work, had more vacancies than usual. Investopedia

• Analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that more savings and unemployment benefits during the pandemic gave workers greater freedom to make job changes. Business Insider

Workers used these advantages to move into roles that offered higher pay, more flexibility, or both.

For CRMs and contact lists, this surge in job changes created a lot of turnover in a two year period than most teams normally see in many years.

How job hopping creates problems in B2B contact lists

Even when emails still work, other contact fields can go wrong. This includes the following:

• The company field became outdated when people changed employers.

• The title field no longer matched their current role.

• The department or team listed no longer reflected who the real decision maker was.

If your system depends on this data, it can waste the time of sales reps and reduce sales. You might also get polite replies from people who aren’t the real decision makers anymore or hear nothing back and never know exactly why.

How Job Hopping Turned Into Job Hugging

How Job Hugging Shows Up in Today’s Labor Market

As the market cooled after the great resignation a new term began appearing in HR and business news called job hugging.

Job hugging describes workers who stay in their current roles because the job market feels too unstable to leave their current position. Navigate

Recent coverage from The Week connects job hugging to a weaker job market with less movement. Updated data from the BLS also shows fewer jobs added than first reported, and analysts describe it as a low hire and low fire environment.

Some articles describe it as the opposite of the Great Resignation. Instead of leaving for new opportunities, workers stay in their current jobs instead because they feel safer doing so. New York Post

What the data shows about job hugging

Here are some stats that stand out.

• The US quits rate has dropped to about 2 percent which is the lowest level seen since 2016 except for the brief decline during the early pandemic. New York Post
  

• A New York Fed survey shows that workers feel less confident about finding a new job than at any time since the survey began in 2013. Wall Street Journal

• Business reports show very low job growth and more cautious hiring plans from CEOs. Business Insider
  

Simply put, people don’t feel free to move as they did compared to 2021-2022. Now they’re holding on to what they have.

Why job hugging hurts data accuracy

It would seem like lower quits rates make contact data safer but that’s only partly true. Even when people stay at the same company, many details about their role can still change.

• Titles change when teams update their naming and structure.

• People get promoted from individual contributor roles into manager or director positions, and the new decision maker might be someone who was never on your contact list or in your CRM

• Budget and decision authority shift from one team to another within a company.

A contact who once handled email marketing could move into lifecycle or growth with different responsibilities. The email address could still work but the role you think you are reaching is not accurate anymore. Static databases can’t see continuous changes which can hurt the efficiency of sales reps.

How Long People Stay in Their Jobs Today

How Long People Stay in Their Jobs Is Dropping

BLS data shows that the median time U.S. workers stay with an employer was 3.9 years in January 2024 which is down from 4.1 years in 2022. This is the lowest level recorded since 2002. Bureau of Labor Statistics

In the private sector the median is only 3.5 years. In the public sector, employees tend to stay longer. Bureau of Labor Statistics

About one in five workers had been with their employer for a year or less in early 2024. Bureau of Labor Statistics

So the belief that most contacts stay in the same role for five to seven years does not match current data.

Sales and marketing roles have the fastest turnover

The BLS tenure tables show that workers in sales and related occupations stay at their jobs for a median of 3.3 years. This is shorter than the tenure of workers in management and professional roles and is among the lowest in white collar jobs. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Industry studies go even further. They show that sales representatives usually stay in their roles for only about 18 to 20 months, based on data summarized from HubSpot and other sales reports. SmartWinnr

This pattern lines up with what many revenue teams experience. It usually takes six to nine months for a sales representative to get on board, and many of them leave about a year later.

If your audience is mostly sales and marketing roles, this turnover shows up directly in your CRM, if it’s static.

How Contact Data Shifts in Two Years

Imagine a list of ten thousand contacts who are mainly sales and marketing leaders.

Within 24 months you can expect the following:

• Many contacts will have moved to a different company.

• Others were promoted or moved into different titles.

• Some domains get acquired, shut down, or redirected.

The contact’s email might go through, but the rest of the information is no longer correct and the contact data has shifted.

Why Static Databases Fall Behind

Static Contact Data Problems

Large B2B databases usually work in a simple way.

• They collect large amounts of data from public and semi-public (requires some level of access) sources.

• They add firmographic and technographic details to each record.

• They run verification checks on a set schedule.

This model assumes the world stays stable between updates. The recent labor data mentioned above shows that this is not the case. With so much job movement and shorter tenures, contact records can become outdated before the next refresh.

Where contact data starts to fail

You do not always notice the problem immediately but it will eventually show up in your metrics.

• Hard bounces happen when domains shut down or mailboxes no longer exist.

• Soft bounces and deliverability problems happen when old addresses turn into spam traps or forwarding addresses.

• You get replies from the wrong person when someone has moved or no longer controls the budget.

• Reply rates go down because you’re contacting people who are not the right audience anymore.

You also lose time. Your team writes personalized outreach messages, builds sequences, and logs tasks for contacts who are not the real decision makers anymore. You’ll see reply rates dropping over time because you are not reaching the audience you want.

Why job hugging does not protect your contact data

Even if people stay at the same company, your contact data still becomes outdated over time. People's roles are always changing, so someone who was a strong fit in 2023 could have a completely different role in 2025.

Static data cannot keep up with constant changes in the labor market. Only fresh, human-verified, and up-to-date research can.

How to Check if Your CRM Fits the Current Job Market

Use this as a quick way to check your current process.

• Do you know the median tenure for the roles in your ICP using BLS or similar data? For example 3.9 years overall and 3.3 years for sales and related roles? Bureau of Labor Statistics

• Do you keep track of how old each list or group of contacts is in your CRM?

• Do you know when each major group of contacts was last checked and updated?

• Are you still sending large campaigns to lists created before 2023 without updating them?

• Do you test a small, fresh list first before spending your budget on a larger one?

• Do you have a plan for replacing old contacts when job changes are obvious such as bounced emails, LinkedIn updates, or out-of-office replies?

If any of these answers are unclear, your data strategy is still assuming people don’t move.

Staying Accurate as the Job Market Continues to Shift

Job hopping and job hugging both show that your ideal prospects do not stay in one position.

They could leave their current job, get promoted, or take on new responsibilities all while their email address stays the same. This is why static B2B contact lists fall behind quickly.

In order to keep your outreach in line with current conditions, you need contact data that is fresh and verified by researchers. It might be difficult, but it saves money and time in the long run.