Nearly 2,000 CEOs left their jobs in the US last year, a record high

Whether they’re resigning, retiring, or being shown the door, more US CEOs said goodbye to their companies last year, with 1,991 CEOs exiting their firms in 2024, per a new report. That’s the highest year-to-date figure since the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas started tracking turnovers in 2002 and a ~60% increase from only two years ago.

No industry has been immune from this exec-odus, and interestingly, the trend is equally pronounced for publicly traded companies: 327 CEOs departed their firms last year, compared to 199 in 2022 and 300 in 2023. This includes big names like Boeing, Starbucks, and Nike.

Top down

This mass corporate switcheroo comes at an optimistic time for much of America Inc., backed by massive stock-market gains of the last two years and record profitability. Some leaders have come under pressure for a lackluster stock price in a year when markets soared — none more so than Intel’s Pat Gelsinger, who resigned after its board lost confidence in his turnaround plans, after Intel missed much of the AI boom.

But it might not just be short-term stock envy that’s driving CEOs away; there may also be a pandemic hangover at play. Indeed, departures have been consistent except for a small dip during the Covid years, presumably because it didn’t seem prudent to change leadership during such a tumultuous time.

Last year’s churn could also reflect a growing risk appetite for “leaders who can navigate increasing complexity” across corporate America, said consulting firm Russell Reynolds via Yahoo Finance. Or, it may reflect another simple fact: CEOs have been getting older, with the average age of an S&P 1500 CEO rising from ~54 to ~59 in the last 15 years, per Business Insider. Maybe they’ve decided they’ve got enough in the bank and want to retire, or maybe they were replaced by an AI chatbot, which one China-based company claimed to do back in 2023.