Overview
The SHRM Hiring Difficulty and Retention Difficulty Indexes, introduced in Q3 2024, measure hiring and retention difficulty based on HR executive responses to paired questions about the difficulty of hiring and retaining employees over the past 12 months and the next 12 months.
When the index is a positive number, executives are more likely to say hiring or retention is high difficulty, while a negative number indicates executives are more likely to say hiring or retention is low difficulty. A value near zero indicates that many respondents are selecting “average” difficulty, or that the shares of respondents selecting “high” and “low” difficulty are similar, or a combination of both.
Insights from the CHRO Hiring Difficulty Index: Recruitment Struggles Soften Slightly
Since the indexes have only been around for four quarters, it’s still unclear what their average value will be and how volatile they will be from quarter to quarter. Taken at face value, the rearward-looking and forward-looking hiring indexes hint at some notable developments.
Three big-picture updates:
- CHRO attitudes about hiring difficulty over the prior 12-month period are essentially unchanged from Q1 2025.
- Expectations about future hiring difficulty have fallen from a high of 7.3 in Q4 2024 to just 0.2 in Q2 2025. It is difficult to fully contextualize this fall without knowing how volatile the index is; however, at first pass, it would appear that the typical HR executive has become much more optimistic that hiring difficulty will be average or even below average in the near future.
- In addition to the cooler labor market, these expectations are likely driven by a sharp rise in uncertainty and growing fears of a forthcoming economic downturn in recent months.
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Insights from the CHRO Retention Difficulty Index: HR Executives Report Modest Softening in Recent Trends
Both the rearward-looking and forward-looking Retention Difficulty Indexes declined this quarter, albeit only very slightly in the case of the rearward-looking index. As of Q2 2025, both index values are negative, meaning that in this quarter, respondents were more likely to report that retention difficulty had been (or was expected to be) below average than above average. In particular, the forward-looking Retention Difficulty Index has fallen from 5.9 in Q4 2024 to -0.8 in Q2 2025, which suggests that CHROs are becoming notably more optimistic about their overall ability to retain labor in the short term. Once again, this is likely a byproduct of the loosening labor market and growing concern about a broader economic downturn.
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Methodology
The CHRO Business Outlook survey is a research study conducted quarterly. The survey was fielded electronically using the SHRM Voice of Work Research Panel to U.S.-based HR executives and senior HR executives (VP+). Respondents represented organizations of all sizes and across industries.
| Quarter, Year | Sample Size (n) | Fielding Dates |
|---|---|---|
| Q3 2024 | n = 339 | 07/17/24 – 07/25/24 |
| Q4 2024 | n = 320 | 10/16/24 – 10/25/24 |
| Q1 2025 | n = 323 | 01/13/25 – 01/21/25 |
| Q2 2025 | n = 353 | 4/08/25 – 04/20/25 |
Read the Q2 2025 series:
CHRO Employment Outlook | CHRO Economic Outlook | SHRM Hiring & Retention Difficulty Indexes