Startups are still hiring, but each hire now has less room to miss

Startup hiring is not broken. It is steady. Carta's State of Startup Compensation: H1 2026, published October 28, says new hires have now outpaced employee exits at its startups for 30 straight months. The more useful number for a founder sits underneath that streak.

What the data shows

In June, companies on Carta made 1.49 hires for each departure, or 8,570 more hires than departures that month. In January 2019, the ratio was 3.49. Carta says hiring volume in the mid-2020s is roughly the same as in the late 2010s, but departures are far more frequent.

Carta also reports that 60% of June departures were voluntary and 40% involuntary, mostly layoffs. That split has held steady for two years, and involuntary departures in June were down 60% from the 2023 spike. Layoffs in H1 2026 were lower than in the same period of 2024 and 2025.

What the data does not show

This is data from companies on Carta, not every startup, and it is not specific to healthcare technology. It counts hires and departures, not whether a hire worked out. A ratio of 1.49 says nothing about how long a role took to fill or how well the person performed.

Our interpretation

This section is interpretation, not Carta's conclusion. When a company adds 3.49 people for every one who leaves, a miss is absorbed by growth. At 1.49, it is not. A mis-hire, or an unplanned exit of someone who owns an integration, a data pipeline, or a customer launch, takes up a larger share of a team that is growing slowly.

Carta also notes that many companies are flattening their organizations and concentrating on individual contributors who do the work. We read that as a higher bar for each seat. There are fewer places for someone to hide, and fewer managers to cover a gap.

What this means for hiring

• Define the outcome before the title. Write down what this person must have delivered by day 90 and day 180.
• Weight hands-on proof. Ask what the candidate built, shipped, or fixed, and what they personally decided.
• Protect your people who own critical systems. Voluntary exits are the majority of departures. Ask now what would make your best builder leave.
• Keep a short list warm. A planned hire costs less than a rushed replacement.

None of this needs a bigger hiring plan, only a more careful one.

If you are planning a senior product, engineering, data, or implementation hire, we are glad to compare notes on what the role should prove.

Keith Anderson, Founder

Sources

• Carta, State of Startup Compensation: H1 2026, October 28, 2026.