There is a version of job hunting that involves no job hunting. No applications, no interviews, no resignation letter. Just a maintained network, a refreshed portfolio, a certification added last month, and a LinkedIn profile kept quietly current. It has a name now, career cushioning, and it is spreading fast.
The behaviour is not disloyalty. It is insurance, and the workers buying it can point to exactly what they are insuring against.
Robert Half surveyed more than 2,000 employed US workers in April 2026 and found 46% planning to look for a new role in the following six months, up from 38% in the first half of the year. Among Gen Z the figure reaches 55%. In technology it is 49%.
Two of the reasons cited are new. Some 46% said AI-generated applications have made competition worse, and 40% said they worry about keeping their skills current as AI evolves. That second anxiety has a number attached to it: skills are now estimated to have a half-life of around four years, and closer to two in fields adjacent to AI.
Do the arithmetic on a two year half-life and cushioning stops looking like paranoia. It looks like basic maintenance.
The more uncomfortable driver is what employers did. HR professionals quoted by Fast Company keep returning to the same pattern: layoffs at profitable companies, restructuring announced without warning, departments cut weeks after positive earnings calls. Once a worker has watched that happen, the implicit contract is gone, and no amount of internal communication puts it back.
Recognition matters here more than most leadership teams assume. A report from Aon and SHRM found 92% of employees intend to stay in strong recognition cultures, against 76% where recognition is weak.
There is also a plainly practical reason. Job searches take longer than they used to. Lining up the next role before leaving the current one is now financial prudence.
Cushioning is not a retention problem you can solve with engagement perks. The people cushioning hardest are frequently strong performers who have concluded that their employer’s stability is outside their control.
Three things actually move the needle, according to the HR practitioners: paying people properly, being transparent about how AI will change their specific role, and recognising work in a way employees can feel. The middle item is the one most companies are handling worst. Vague reassurance that AI will augment rather than replace reads as evasion, and evasion is what sends people to update their profiles.
It also connects to something we wrote about this week: the NBER research showing nearly one in five LinkedIn users retroactively edits jobs they have already left, adding AI keywords years after the fact.
Cushioning is probably here to stay. It costs nothing, nobody notices, and once the habit is built there is no reason to drop it even in a good market.
