Discover the Jobs with the Highest and Lowest Employee

Global HR and payroll company Remote surveyed business owners across the UK and US to reveal the jobs with the highest and lowest employee turnover.

- Employee turnover rates are set to hit 41.4% on average in 2023, with the US reaching 46.8% and the UK hitting 35.6%
- Hybrid and Remote work structures have the lowest employee turnover rates at 36.6% and 38.7% respectively, compared to in-office roles at 43.7%
- Entry-level positions had the highest staff turnover rate in 2022 at 35%

Finance and Accounting is the industry that saw the biggest increase in employee turnover from 2021 to 2022 at 3.3%

Finding and hiring a new employee takes 40 days on average and costs business 34.5% of an employee’s salary

Global HR and payroll company Remote have conducted a study to understand the importance of employee retention, why turnover rates may be high, and what you can do to reduce them.

They surveyed 544 employers in the UK and US to discover the jobs with the highest and lowest turnover rates, how turnover rates have changed in the last few years, and the negative impacts of high turnover.

Employee turnover rates are expected to rise to 41% in 2023

The average company turnover rate in the UK and US from 2019 to 2023:

Year	UK	US	Average
2019	25.8%	34.3%	30.3%
2020	29.7%	36.9%	33.4%
2021	31.6%	40.3%	36.1%
2022	33.6%	43.9%	38.9%
*2023 (estimated)**	35.6%	46.8%	41.4%

*this figure is the estimated turnover rate given by the business owners surveyed.

On average, employee turnover rates have increased by 8.7% since 2019, and are estimated to increase even more in 2023 with a predicted 35.6% turnover rate in the UK and 46.8% in the US.

The rates in the US have been increasing every year, seeing an increase of 9.6% since 2019. The UK rates have increased by 7.7% in the last four years.

Product and Information Technology are the business functions with the highest employee turnover in 2022

The average employee turnover rate of business departments in the UK and US in 2022:

		Average turnover as a percent of total employees 2022			% average change since 2021
	Job function	UK	US	Average	% average change since 2021
1	Product	32.2%	40.3%	36.4%	1.6%
2	Information Technology	30.2%	41.7%	36.0%	2.0%
3	Engineering	29.4%	40.6%	35.2%	1.6%
4	Finance / Accounting	30.5%	39.5%	35.2%	3.3%
5	Sales	31.0%	38.9%	35.1%	-0.5%
6	Marketing/PR	29.2%	39.1%	34.3%	0.9%
7	HR/People	28.3%	39.9%	34.2%	1.8%
8	Design	30.0%	38.1%	34.1%	0.6%
9	Customer service/support	28.3%	39.3%	33.9%	-0.2%
10	Legal	28.1%	39.5%	33.9%	1.3%
11	Administration/operations	28.0%	39.1%	33.8%	0.3%

In 2022, jobs in ‘product’ departments have seen the highest turnover in the UK with a 32.2% rate. Information technology jobs came in with the highest turnover rates in the US with an average of 41.7% of employees leaving.

Finance and accounting roles have seen the biggest average increase in turnover, with a 3.3% higher rate in 2022 compared to 2021. Customer service and sales roles are the only jobs that have seen a decrease in their employee turnover, with rates falling by 0.2% and 0.5% respectively.

On the flip side, legal jobs had the lowest turnover rates in both 2021 and 2022 in the UK. The US saw the lowest turnover in employees in HR jobs in 2021 and then design jobs in 2022.

Employee turnover also varies in different job levels. Remote discovered that in 2021 director roles had the highest turnover rate with 35%, compared to 2022 which saw the highest turnover in entry-level positions with 35%.

Businesses offering hybrid roles find it easier to retain staff

The average turnover rate of different work models in the UK and US from 2019 to 2023:

Year	Office	Hybrid	Remote
2019	30.1%

Employee turnover rates have increased by 9% since 2019