Career Progression Trends: How People Grow, Advance, and Exit Roles

What Today’s Career Progression Trends Reveal About the Changing World of Work

As organizations adapt to a continually evolving job market, last year revealed a significant shift in how companies promote, retain, and develop their talent. Promotions followed familiar cycles, exits aligned with performance reviews and restructures, and disparities in career progression—especially for underrepresented groups—remained stubbornly persistent.

For this article, we use just-published data from Aura’s Industry Benchmarking Report to examine the key underlying data that shaped career development trends over the past year. We also explore sector-specific insights and gender parity issues, all while highlighting how workforce intelligence can drive organizational success.

Let’s explore the insights that matter and what they mean for building a resilient workforce prepared for future challenges.

Curious how people are advancing, exiting, or plateauing across sectors? See Aura in action—request a demo and get powerful data on career development patterns, promotions, and workforce planning.

What We Mean by Career Development and How Aura Measures It

When we talk about career development in this report, we’re not relying on self-reported aspirations or internal HR policies. At Aura, career development refers to observable, external workforce mobility signals, derived from millions of online employee profiles, including:

• Promotions:  When an employee moves from one seniority level to a higher one, based on job title analysis across time.

• Lateral moves or role changes: Shifts in functional responsibilities, job categories, or geographies,  indicating broadening career paths.

• Employee exits: Transitions to other organizations, often in pursuit of growth or leadership opportunities.

• Tenure and skills evolution: How long employees stay in roles, and what new skills they gain over time.

Aura computes these indicators using machine learning models trained to detect role progression, skill development, and leadership transitions across 20 million companies. This allows us to track how careers evolve—not just inside one company, but across the broader labor market. We then drill down into specific sectors and industries for detailed information, helping companies with benchmarking and competitive analysis.

Promotion Patterns: Fewer Opportunities, Tighter Windows

Promotions peaked during fiscal review cycles, specifically in January and March, but declined quickly by the end of Q4. After a modest spike in June, the drop-off was sharp, with the months of October to December representing the lowest promotion volumes of the year. This pattern suggests increasing caution in strategic planning and talent mobility during the tail-end of 2024.

In advanced manufacturing and services, the promotion rate led the pack at 4.1%. Meanwhile, the energy, resources, and utilities posted a growth rate of only 2.1%, despite demands for new skills driven by emerging technologies.

Insight: Promotion timing remains tethered to performance review calendars, but the intensity and consistency are weakening—creating fewer windows for career advancement and slowing the pace of career trajectories.

Exit Timing and Turnover Trends: What They Reveal About Career Momentum

January, May, and August were peak exit months. These align with annual reviews, mid-year reshuffles, and post-holiday career pathing reconsiderations. Exits are no longer just a metric, after all, they’re a window into employee satisfaction, mental health, and evolving expectations around flexible work environments.

Professional services had the highest exit rates at 15.1%, indicating a fast-moving environment with both high pressure and high mobility. In contrast, energy, resources, and utilities showed a more stable exit trend, at just 2.6%, which may reflect strong retention, stable career paths, or fewer external job transitions due to the industry's structure.

Insight: Career support and continuous learning are increasingly important to retain top talent in sectors experiencing churn. Exit data helps organizations identify where to encourage employees through career development programs, mentorship, or career coaching.

Gender Disparities in Career Progression: What’s Changing and What Isn’t

Even as overall promotions declined, female promotion rates remained volatile, spiking in January and March but falling dramatically in Q4. Healthcare led with 47% female promotions, but energy and utilities lagged at about 25%. 

Despite investment and broad cultural movements, many organizations may still be struggling to build inclusive career paths for female professionals.

Aura’s insights reveal that without deliberate leadership development and career pathing efforts, we risk reinforcing existing imbalances, especially at senior leadership levels.

Which Sectors Support Career Progression and Which Ones Stall It?

• Advanced Manufacturing: Strongest career growth due to innovation cycles and high demand for technical and transferable skills.

• Healthcare: Most equitable in terms of female leadership and career progression diversity.

• Energy & Utilities: Most constrained promotion dynamics, raising flags about skills gaps, limited learning management systems, and reduced skill-building opportunities.

• Professional Services: High churn indicates urgent need for employee engagement, project-based learning, and career success planning.

These dynamics highlight the importance of behavioral insights, digital literacy, and career planning tools in preparing employees for the future of work, where roles, job titles, and soft skills are constantly evolving.

AI and Career Progression: What’s Actually Changing

Our annual and year-over-year workforce data tell a clear story: job mobility slowed, with fewer promotions and reduced external hiring, even as expectations for upskilling and adaptability increased. Employers aren't just looking to fill roles—they're reassessing how they build and grow talent from within.

While job postings declined by approximately 16% globally and the active workforce size contracted by over 4%, demand for future skills, particularly in areas such as data literacy, AI fluency, and strategic thinking, became more concentrated and competitive.

In this environment, companies that adopted AI-enabled workforce strategies, such as skills-based role mapping, dynamic organizational design, and benchmarked leadership tracking, should gain a meaningful edge. Tools like predictive analytics, role-level benchmarking, and real-time attrition models aren’t future bets, they’re already helping organizations:

• Detect and close skills gaps before they hinder growth

• Build skills-based career paths with greater agility

• Align career development programs to actual employee trajectories, not just org charts

Meanwhile, static, one-size-fits-all approaches to career development—such as generic LMS systems or annual training modules—are being rapidly replaced by modular learning, cohort-based mentoring, and real-time feedback loops powered by behavioral and external data.

Rethinking Career Success: Skills, Support, and Strategic Growth

When considering the implications of our Industry Benchmarking Report, a few opportunities come to mind. To stay ahead, companies must rethink how they:

• Identify and address skills gaps

• Support lifelong learning and job rotations

• Align talent with career aspirations and professional growth goals

• Create inclusive mentorship programs and mental health resources

• Build career development programs that are dynamic, responsive, and built around employee skills

In short, career progression is no longer a linear process, but a strategic one. Organizations that embrace this shift will build not just career support systems but business advantage.

See Aura in Action

Looking to unlock valuable insights around career progression trends, career pathing, and professional development across your industry? Want to understand how promotions, exits, and growth paths are evolving?

Aura’s Workforce Intelligence Platform delivers actionable insights on career dynamics, retention patterns, and skill gaps. Request a demo now and build more innovative and competitive strategies for career progression.