Overview
The SHRM Hiring Difficulty and Retention Difficulty Indexes, introduced in Q3 2024, measure retention and hiring 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.
The chief goal of these indexes is to capture and track the degree of hiring and retention difficulty that employers have faced in the near past and expect to face in the near future. Broadly speaking, increasingly positive index values indicate that responses are more concentrated in the "high" category, whereas increasingly negative index values indicates that responses are more concentrated in the "low" category. A value near zero indicates that many respondents are selecting "average," that the share of respondents selecting "high" and "low" are similar, or both.
Insights from the CHRO Hiring Difficulty Index: Recruitment Challenges Remain Stable; Expectations of Future Difficulty Rebound
The findings from Q3 2025 suggest that average hiring difficulty in the most recent 12-month period has declined very slightly relative to the same value in Q2 2025. This is consistent with a steady softening of the labor market, though in practical terms this dip does not represent a notable shift. In contrast, expectations about hiring difficulty over the next 12-month period rebounded substantially relative to Q2 2025, which has a few likely explanations.
Two potential explanations for the change in expected hiring difficulty over the next 12-month period:
- Future expectations in Q2 2025 were likely dampened by pessimism and uncertainty about economic conditions, especially relating to market volatility associated with rapidly evolving trade policies. Although significant uncertainty remains, it is plausible that CHROs were at least somewhat more bullish about future labor market conditions in early July than they were a few months prior.
- Between the fielding of the Q2 2025 and Q3 2025 surveys, newly published data generally suggested the labor market remained quite strong by historical standards, which might have fueled more optimistic expectations about continued labor market strength.
Importantly, the Q3 2025 survey was fielded prior to the publication of the BLS jobs report covering July 2025, which indicated a significant weakening of the labor market in recent months. We will be closely tracking if and how this development reshapes expectations in the Q4 2025 data.
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Insights from the CHRO Retention Difficulty Index: Expected Retention Difficulty in the Next 12 Months Rises for the First Time Since Q4 2024
Q3 2025 data suggests that retention difficulty remained effectively the same for organizations, marking three straight quarters in which this value has been stable.
In contrast, after falling sharply between Q4 2024 and Q2 2025, expected retention difficulty over the next 12 months bounced back somewhat in Q3 2025. This recovery was likely driven by the same factors highlighted above when discussing the similar rebound in the forward-looking Hiring Difficulty Index. Once again, it seems likely that the more negative labor market information released in recent weeks could drive a reappraisal of these expectations in the Q4 2025 survey, potentially leading to another fall in this index.
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Methodology
The CHRO 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 | 04/08/25 – 04/20/25 |
| Q3 2025 | n = 307 | 07/09/25 – 07/21/25 |
Read the Q3 2025 series:
CHRO Employment Outlook | CHRO Economic Outlook | SHRM Hiring & Retention Difficulty Indexes