63% of employers feel secure, half their staff don’t
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES — Sixty-three percent of employers reported no planned headcount reductions for 2026, yet nearly half of their workers are already planning to seek new employment within six months — a confidence gap that Morgan McKinley’s 2026 Workplace Trends Report describes as one of the defining labor-market disconnects of the year.
Employers mistake a stable plan for a settled workforce
“The risk for employers is that they confuse a stable workforce plan with a settled workforce,” said Trayc Keevans, Global FDI Director and Head of Research at Morgan McKinley.
The report, drawing on 2,799 worker responses globally, found the 63-to-50 gap — employers who see no change coming versus workers already planning to leave — is the structural result of pay stagnation: 70% of employees received no salary increase in the past six months.
The data is not telling a story of layoffs — it is telling a story of invisible exits: workers who appear settled on paper and are already gone in practice.
What workers are counting that employers aren’t
“Retention is no longer just about staffing levels,” Keevans added. “It is about whether people believe there is a future for them in the organisation.”
Seventy percent of workers believe AI and data skills are now critical competencies — yet 56% rate their employer’s professional development investment as insufficient, a gap that is shaping exit decisions alongside stagnant pay.
Thirty-seven percent of workers believe their role faces restructuring, automation, or cost-cutting risk — an assessment made independently of what employers announce, based on observable signals in their daily work.
Seventy-five percent of employers say they prioritize redeployment and reskilling as their primary workforce strategy — a position the report’s exit-intent data suggests is not reaching workers in a form that shifts behavior.
The counter-narrative this report delivers to the broader executive-confidence debate is structural: employers measuring workforce stability through headcount plans are missing the metric that actually determines retention.
For BPO and offshore staffing providers, the Morgan McKinley confidence gap is a direct market signal. The 25% of employers already relying on temporary staff and contractors are the segment whose internal retention data diverges most from their headcount announcements — and who are most positioned to expand offshore models when that divergence becomes visible.
Providers that offer stable, AI-skilled teams with documented development tracks will capture the demand that employer reassurance alone is failing to meet.
