Most retention conversations start with the wrong question. Why won’t people stay? This week, new research on job quality offered a better one: what exactly are we asking people to stay for?

Gallup’s second annual American Job Quality Study found that only about four in ten U.S. workers hold a quality job. The number did not move from last year. And the workers in jobs that fell short were nearly twice as likely to be working somewhere else a year later.

That is not a loyalty problem. It is a design problem.

Key takeaways

  • Gallup’s 2026 American Job Quality Study found about 41% of U.S. workers have a quality job, statistically unchanged from 2025.
  • Employees in non-quality jobs were nearly twice as likely to have changed employers a year later (15% vs. 8%).
  • Growth, voice and workload, not just pay, predict who plans to leave. That makes retention a job design problem, not a motivation problem.
  • As AI speeds up work, leaders have to decide where the saved time goes. Otherwise it quietly becomes more work, and the value exchange weakens.

What’s happening: new job quality data meets AI-era hiring plans

On October 22, Emily Peck at Axios reported on Gallup’s new data showing a majority of Americans are in low-quality jobs. The study, produced with Jobs for the Future and The Families and Workers Fund, surveyed 17,874 working adults ages 18 to 75 between late January and late March of this year.

The 2026 American Job Quality Study report from Jobs for the Future and Gallup defines a quality job across five dimensions: financial well-being; workplace culture and safety; growth and development; agency and voice, including influence over technology; and work structure and autonomy, meaning a predictable schedule and a manageable workload. A few findings stood out to me:

  • 41% of workers have a quality job, statistically unchanged from 40% in 2025.
  • Employees who were in non-quality jobs in 2025 were nearly twice as likely to be working for a different employer a year later: 15% versus 8%.
  • Workers who scored low on growth and development had 2.5 times the odds of planning to leave. Low scores on agency and voice carried 1.6 times the odds.
  • 55% of employees said they have less influence than they would like over the adoption of new technology at work.
  • 31% of AI users said their employer has asked them to take on more responsibilities since they began using AI. Among those who say AI helps them work faster, it was 37%.
  • Among Gen Z employees (ages 18 to 29 in the study), 32% are in quality jobs, compared with 40% of employees overall. 23% switched employers in the past year.

That last point deserves care. The report also notes that Gen Z workers are more concentrated in hourly roles and in sectors like retail, leisure and hospitality, and education. In other words, the data describes the jobs many younger workers hold as much as it describes the workers themselves.

The same week, HR Dive’s Lara Ewen covered KPMG’s 2026 U.S. CEO Outlook. According to that coverage, 89% of U.S. CEOs expect to increase headcount over the next three years, and their top workforce challenges include skill gaps, AI upskilling and training, and attracting and retaining talent. 81% said AI has pushed them to rethink training and development, and 75% said it has made them rethink the skills required for entry-level roles.

Put those together and you get one story. Leaders plan to hire. They worry about keeping people. And most of the jobs people are being asked to stay in have not improved.

Why job quality is a retention question, not a perk

In Chapter 5 of The Next Turn, “The Value Exchange (The 3-Year Problem),” I write about a pattern leaders across industries describe: talented early-career people arrive with energy and leave before the organization benefits. The usual explanation is commitment. The better explanation is the exchange.

In an older system, loyalty was often given first and tested later. In the current one, value is assessed first and loyalty is built only if the exchange proves itself over time.

The Next Turn

The Gallup data puts numbers to that sentence. People are assessing the exchange, and the ones who find it lacking move. Not because they don’t care. Because the job did not make sense to stay in.

This is the first turn in the book: the definition of work is changing. By that I mean what people believe work is for, what it should provide and what it is worth. A predictable schedule, a visible path to grow and some say in how the work changes are no longer extras. For many people across every generation, they are part of what a job is supposed to be.

That is why I argue in Chapter 5 that retention is a design problem, not a motivation problem. You cannot inspire someone into staying in a job that does not hold up. You can redesign the job.

The AI piece: where does the saved time go?

The second turn is the structure of work: how work actually flows, now that AI is becoming infrastructure inside it. This is where the job quality data gets more interesting.

Axios called low job quality “partly an AI issue,” noting that employers are looking at whether they can get more done with fewer workers as they add AI to their workflows. The Gallup and JFF report found that nearly a third of AI users have been handed more responsibilities since they started using it. The report is careful not to claim AI causes better or worse jobs. But the direction is worth a leader’s attention.

In Chapter 12, “Defining Work Again,” one of the seven moves is to redesign expectations once the workflow changes. When a task gets faster, someone decides what happens to the time. If no one decides on purpose, the default is usually more work. That can feel efficient to the organization and feel like a worse deal to the person doing it.

Here is the collision. Faster work without a redesigned exchange can quietly erode the very dimensions that predict whether people stay: workload, growth and voice. And when 55% of employees say they have less influence than they would like over new technology, many of them are experiencing that change as something done to them rather than with them.

The standards have not changed. Leaders still need quality, reliability and follow-through. What has changed is what people expect in return, and how fast the work underneath them is being rebuilt.

Your next turn

If you lead a team, a department or an organization, here are a few moves for this week:

  • Audit one role’s exchange. Take a role with high turnover and ask the Chapter 5 questions: What is clear? What is vague? What growth is visible in the first three years?
  • Score it against the five dimensions. Pay and benefits, culture and safety, growth, voice, and schedule and workload. Where would the person in that role say it falls short?
  • Decide where AI-saved time goes. For one workflow that AI has sped up, make an explicit decision: more output, more development, more customer time, or a lighter load. Then tell the team what you decided and why.
  • Give people a voice in the next tool decision. Before the next AI rollout, ask the people who will use it how it should change their work, and what it should not change.
  • Ask the retention question honestly. In your next one-on-one, try: “What would make this job worth staying in for another two years?” Then listen for the exchange, not the complaint.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a quality job in Gallup’s study?

The 2026 American Job Quality Study measures five dimensions: financial well-being, workplace culture and safety, growth and development, agency and voice, and work structure and autonomy. A job counts as quality when its overall score falls in the quality range, and a low score on financial well-being keeps it out of that category.

Does job quality really affect employee retention?

According to the study, yes. Employees in non-quality jobs in 2025 were nearly twice as likely to be working for a different employer a year later, 15% versus 8%. Low scores on growth and development, and on agency and voice, were both significant predictors of intent to leave.

Why are Gen Z employees leaving jobs faster?

In the study, 23% of Gen Z employees switched employers in the past year, and only 32% are in quality jobs. The report also notes that younger workers are more concentrated in hourly roles and in sectors like retail and hospitality. That suggests leaders should look first at the design of the jobs, not at the commitment of the people in them.

The question underneath retention

Leaders are not struggling with retention because they lack care. In my work with leadership teams, a lack of care is rarely the issue. They are struggling because the jobs they inherited were designed for an exchange that no longer holds by default, and the work inside those jobs is changing faster than anyone has redefined it.

Because the real response to the three-year problem is not expecting more loyalty. It is building work that is easier to believe in.

The Next Turn

If you want more on the value exchange and the two turns, you can find other posts on the Next Turn blog.

So here is the question I would sit with this week: if your best person left a year from now, would it be because they stopped caring, or because the job stopped being worth it?

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