Are recent hire cohorts staying longer than older ones?
№ 216 · Attrition by cohort
Definition
MetricShare of a hire cohort that leaves within twelve months of start date
Unit% of the hire cohort
Triangular grid showing cumulative attrition rate per hire cohort by month N: paler cells mean fewer departures. Build by tracking each hire cohort's exits per month. Later rows staying paler means hiring quality or onboarding improving. Example: Q1 cohort 42% gone by M5; Q5 cohort 26% at the same age.
Benchmarks
| Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|
| Over 25% of the cohort | 12% to 15% of the cohort | Under 10% of the cohort |
US employers using Jobvite, Lever and JazzHR, 6,640 companies across software, business services, retail, hospitality and manufacturing, 2025 hire cohorts · The headline numbers move violently year to year and the definitions do not reconcile, so this card needs its caveat read. Employ reports first-year turnover falling to 12.1% in 2025 from 23.7% in 2024, a 49% drop in one year, which is better explained by a frozen external labor market than by better onboarding. The same dataset reports the share of new hires still employed at three months falling to 84.6% from 93.9%, so ninety-day attrition worsened while twelve-month attrition improved. That contradiction is a denominator artefact: cohort-based rates and rates computed against average headcount produce different answers from the same events. Survey evidence points the other way again, with 61% of HR leaders in the Enboarder sample saying early attrition is rising. Treat the shape of the cohort curve as the signal and the level as approximate.
| Category | Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retail and wholesale | 35% or more | 26.7% annual voluntary | 18% annual voluntary |
| Technology and software | 18% | 12% | 8% |
| Insurance and financial services | 12% | 8.2% | 6% |
When it looks bad
Each successive hire cohort drops faster in its first ninety days than the cohort before it, so the heatmap darkens from left to right along the top rows while older cohorts stay stable.
The Q1 cohort retains 94% at ninety days, Q2 retains 89% and Q3 retains 81%, while every cohort older than a year holds above 90%.
What to do about it
- Cut the cohort by hiring manager and by source before cutting it by function. Ashby shows referred candidates pass screens at 52% against 35% overall, so source mix alone changes early attrition, and manager-level variance is usually larger than function-level variance.
- Build a structured ninety-day plan with milestones rather than a first-week orientation. Gallup finds only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job onboarding, so the baseline is low enough that structure alone moves the number.
- Close the gap between what the interview promised and what the job is. Employ's research traces early exits to mismatch between the hiring process description and the reality of the role, which is a job description and interview scorecard fix rather than an engagement fix.
- Report ninety-day and twelve-month attrition on the same chart with the same denominator. The two published series move in opposite directions in 2025, and a company reporting only one of them will draw the wrong conclusion about its own onboarding.
Sources
- Employ Inc. First-year turnover fell to 12.1% in 2025 from 23.7% in 2024. Time to screen improved across all sizes, with enterprises fastest at 5.7 days and hospitality slowest at 6.5 days. employinc.com ↗
- Employ Inc. Time to fill fell from 67.7 days in 2024 to 63.5 days in 2025, while time to hire edged up from 45.7 to 46.2 days. globenewswire.com ↗
- HR Dive reporting Employ Inc. Applications per job rose to 257.6 from 207.2. Offer acceptance averaged 83.9%, highest in manufacturing at 91% and lowest in software and tech at 80.8%. New hires still employed at three months fell to 84.6% from 93.9%. hrdive.com ↗
- Enboarder 29% of HR leaders name high attrition in the first 90 days as their top onboarding challenge, and 20.5% report up to half of new hires leaving inside 90 days. 61% say early turnover is rising. enboarder.com ↗
- HR Bench 90-day new hire turnover sits at 1.73% at the 25th percentile, 3.4% at the median and 5.49% at the 75th percentile, measured against average headcount rather than cohort size. hrbench.com ↗
- Pin reporting Mercer 2025 US Turnover Survey and SHRM 2025 Benchmarking US voluntary attrition averaged 13% in 2024 to 2025, down from 24.7% in 2022. Retail and wholesale run 26.7% against 8.2% in insurance. SHRM's median voluntary turnover was 9% with a 13% average. pin.com ↗
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics Job openings 7.4 million, hires 5.3 million, total separations 5.4 million, quits 3.2 million and layoffs 1.8 million. Quits rate 2.0% per month, layoffs rate 1.1%, total separations rate 3.4%. bls.gov ↗
- Gallup Only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job onboarding new employees. gallup.com ↗
- Ashby Median days to first fill: 52 junior, 63 mid-level, 71 senior. Technical roles take a median 75 days versus 60 for business roles. Interview loops run 17.9 days technical versus 14.4 business. Passthrough is 35% at screen and 81% at offer, and referred candidates pass screens at 52%. ashbyhq.com ↗