The floor moved.

For more than a decade, layoff and discharge rates in the US knowledge economy traced a predictable floor. The pattern was so steady you could plan a hiring cycle around it, set retention targets to it, and trust it to behave the way it had behaved through three administrations and one pandemic. That floor has moved. The floor moved. is a visual receipt of the new baseline in white-collar work, drawn directly from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, Table 5, with the baseline window set at 2021 to 2025. The chart maps the new floor against the old one across the sectors most exposed to knowledge work, so the baseline drift becomes a shape you can see instead of a number you have to argue about.

This matters because most public commentary on the US labor market is still anchored to a baseline that no longer exists. The headline unemployment rate keeps people calm. The discharge rate inside Information, Finance and Insurance, and Professional and Business Services tells a different story about what employers are doing when the cameras are off. For founders building, hiring, or planning capital around the knowledge economy, the implication is direct. The cost of holding a role, the time-to-fill, the candidate pool, the salary band, every one of those assumptions is sitting on a floor that has shifted underneath them. Stop arguing about the headline. Read the drift. The floor moved, and the JOLTS data shows exactly where it landed.