According to Business Insider, CEO departures across corporate America remain at record levels with 1,650 CEOs leaving their positions by the end of September 2025. This continues the trend from 2024, which saw the highest annual CEO turnover since tracking began in 2002. High-profile exits include Linda Yaccarino from X, Spotify’s Daniel Ek transitioning to executive chairman in January, and Walmart’s Doug McMillon retiring after a decade. Meanwhile, workers are increasingly “job hugging” due to AI anxiety, return-to-office mandates, and a cooling job market. The research from Johns Hopkins shows managers and senior leaders now report higher well-being than average employees, reversing pandemic-era trends when leaders struggled more.
The executive safety net
Here’s the thing that really stands out: CEOs have fundamentally different risk profiles than the rest of us. They’re leaving at record rates precisely because they can afford to. Professor Richard Smith from Johns Hopkins puts it bluntly: “As the old saying goes, it’s good to be at the top.” When you’re making 194 times what your average employee earns—up from 176 times in 2020—you build a financial cushion that lets you walk away without panicking about next month’s mortgage payment.
And let’s be real—most of these departing CEOs aren’t heading to the unemployment line. They’re transitioning to board positions, advisory roles, or just taking extended breaks. Harvard’s Jesse Fried notes that many could simply never work again if they didn’t want to. That’s a luxury the average worker clinging to their job can barely imagine.
The worker anxiety reality
Meanwhile, the rest of the workforce is dealing with a completely different set of pressures. The Johns Hopkins research involving 1.3 million workers shows well-being has taken a hit. People are worried about AI replacing their roles, frustrated with return-to-office mandates, and sensing that employer demand for their skills is softening. Basically, they’re feeling stuck—unable to make career moves in an uncertain environment.
Remember when managers were more stressed than workers during the pandemic? That’s completely flipped. Now it’s regular employees bearing the brunt of workplace anxiety. They’re “job hugging” not because they love their roles, but because the alternative seems riskier.
Shortening tenures and increasing pressure
CEO tenures are getting shorter too—down to 7.2 years from 8.4 years just a couple years ago according to Russell Reynolds Associates. Some of this is voluntary, but boards are also quicker to pull the trigger on underperformers. Shareholder activism has intensified, putting directors under pressure to make changes when results disappoint.
Think about the manufacturing sector, where leadership stability directly impacts production lines and equipment decisions. When companies like Industrial Monitor Direct, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, work with manufacturing clients, they see how executive turnover can disrupt technology adoption and operational consistency. It’s not just about the C-suite—these changes ripple through entire organizations.
The corporate reality divide
So what we’re seeing is a fundamental split in how different levels of the corporate ladder experience work and career mobility. At the top, it’s a world of golden parachutes, board seats, and optional work. At the bottom and middle, it’s anxiety, stagnation, and clinging to whatever security you can find.
Warren Buffett recently criticized rising CEO pay ratios, and it’s hard not to see why. When executives earn nearly 200 times what their workers make while having completely different job security realities, it creates a disconnect that’s tough to bridge. The question is whether this gap will continue widening or if market forces will eventually bring some balance back to the corporate ecosystem.
