A good employee attrition rate generally falls between 10% and 15% annually for most industries, though the ideal number depends heavily on your sector, company size, and workforce type. An attrition rate of zero isn’t actually desirable, since some turnover brings in fresh talent and keeps labor costs manageable. The goal is a rate low enough to preserve institutional knowledge and team stability, but high enough to allow natural workforce renewal.
How Attrition Rate Is Calculated
The basic formula is straightforward: divide the number of employees who left during a period by the average number of employees during that same period, then multiply by 100. If you had 500 employees on average over the year and 60 departed, your annual attrition rate is 12%.
One important distinction: attrition and turnover are often used interchangeably, but they’re not identical. With turnover, the company backfills the position. With attrition, the role may stay vacant or get eliminated entirely. This matters when you’re benchmarking, because a company reporting “attrition” may be counting only positions that disappeared, while another reporting “turnover” includes every departure regardless of whether someone new was hired. Make sure you’re comparing the same metric.
You’ll also want to separate voluntary attrition (employees choosing to leave) from involuntary attrition (layoffs, terminations, retirements). Voluntary attrition is the number most organizations focus on, because it reflects how well you’re retaining people who want to stay.
Benchmarks by Industry and Company Size
The cross-industry average monthly separation rate was 3.1% in February 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That translates to roughly 37% annualized, but this figure includes all separations: quits, layoffs, retirements, and transfers. It’s a broader measure than what most companies mean when they talk about their attrition rate internally.
When looking at voluntary turnover specifically, LinkedIn data puts the overall average at about 10.6% annually. Here’s how specific industries compare:
- Professional services (consulting, accounting): the highest turnover of any sector
- Tech and media: 12.9%
- Entertainment, accommodation, and retail: above average, driven by large frontline workforces with naturally higher churn
- Administrative roles: among the lowest at 7.8%
- HR roles: among the highest at 14.6%
Company size matters too. Small and midsized businesses average around 12.0%, while larger enterprises tend to run lower at about 9.9%. Bigger companies typically offer more internal mobility, better benefits packages, and structured career paths that help retain employees longer.
If your organization operates in retail or hospitality, a rate around 15% to 20% might be perfectly normal and manageable. If you’re running a professional services firm, anything under 13% is competitive. For a large enterprise in a stable industry, staying under 10% signals strong retention.
Why Zero Attrition Isn’t the Goal
Some attrition is genuinely healthy. When employees leave voluntarily, the company can reduce labor costs without the morale damage that comes with layoffs. Unfilled roles also give organizations flexibility to shift resources, restructure departments, or redirect budgets toward higher priorities.
New hires bring fresh perspectives and skills that existing teams may lack. Attrition creates natural openings for this kind of renewal. It also opens promotion opportunities for current employees, which itself improves retention among your strongest performers. And in cases where an organization is trying to shift its culture, some degree of natural departure helps that transition happen without forced reorganizations.
When Attrition Gets Too High
The costs of excessive attrition are steep and often underestimated. One estimate places the total cost of replacing a single employee at three to four times that person’s salary. For someone earning $75,000, that’s $225,000 to $300,000 when you account for recruiting, onboarding, lost productivity, and the time it takes for a new hire to reach full effectiveness.
Recruiting alone typically takes eight to twelve weeks, and most experts estimate that onboarding runs about three months. Some research suggests it can take one to two years before a new employee is fully productive in their role. During that ramp-up period, teams carry the weight.
High attrition also drains institutional knowledge. An estimated 42% of the expertise needed to perform a given job exists only in the head of the person currently doing it. When that person walks out the door, the knowledge goes with them, and 60% of employees report that getting critical information from colleagues is already difficult under normal circumstances.
The ripple effects hit remaining staff hardest. In surveys of burned-out employees, 41% pointed to staff shortages as the primary cause. That burnout becomes self-reinforcing: overworked employees are more likely to leave, which creates more shortages and more burnout. Women and younger workers report experiencing this cycle at disproportionately higher rates.
How to Evaluate Your Own Rate
Start by calculating your annualized attrition rate using the formula above, then break it into voluntary and involuntary categories. Your voluntary rate is the one worth benchmarking against industry averages, since involuntary departures reflect deliberate business decisions rather than retention problems.
Look at where departures are concentrated. A 12% overall rate might be fine if it’s spread evenly across the organization, but alarming if it’s clustered in one high-value team or among employees with less than a year of tenure. High early-tenure attrition often signals problems with hiring, onboarding, or misaligned expectations during the interview process.
Track the trend over time rather than fixating on a single quarter. A rate that’s been climbing steadily for six months tells a different story than one that spiked because of a single department reorganization. Seasonal patterns matter too, particularly in industries like retail and hospitality where hiring and departures follow predictable cycles.
Finally, compare your rate against companies of similar size in your industry, not against a universal benchmark. A 15% rate that would be excellent in hospitality could signal serious problems at a software company. The right target is one where you’re retaining the people you most want to keep, refreshing your workforce at a sustainable pace, and not spending more on replacement costs than you can absorb.