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It’s Here…the 2025 NADA Dealership Workforce Study and Yes, Turnover is Still a Challenge.

As a busy dealer, if you've ever felt like you’re stuck in a constant loop of hiring, training, and re-hiring the same positions at your store, you’re not alone. It’s a cycle that’s costing time and money and rarely spares any dealer nationwide. 

The just-released 2025 NADA Dealership Workforce Study sheds light on what many dealerships already know… 

Turnover is still too high and rising in specific key roles.  

ESi-Q has been the engine powering this study in partnership with NADA for over 14 years offering critical market analysis of hiring trends throughout the industry.  

Dealerships have come to rely on this information to help identify similar issues within their own stores and gain valuable insights to help improve their own hiring and retention outcomes.  

Find more about the NADA Workforce Study here.

ESi-Q’s Role in Shaping Dealership Hiring Insights 

For over a decade, ESi-Q has been the behind-the-scenes partner to NADA, creating a report that provides a deep dive into the state of hiring, compensation, demographics, and employee retention in critical roles throughout dealerships.  

Sales, Service, F&I…all drivers of dealer revenue and all positions that can be challenging to stabilize from a personnel perspective. 

ESi-Q’s new online analytics platform helps make this study possible and, more importantly, highly actionable. Data drives success in any business and dealers need it to help drive the change that grows revenue and increases employee satisfaction. 

What Some of the Numbers Are Telling Us 

What trends are being reinforced by this year’s study?  

Something all too familiar - the challenge of retaining the right people and that this issue may get worse before it gets better.  

Here’s a sneak peek at a few national dealership trends… 

  • Industry Turnover: Overall dealership turnover increased another four percentage points in 2024. A third straight year of increases and a clear sign that instability is increasing and retention issues are worsening. 

  • 3-Year Turnover Trend: In 2024, dealership employee turnover hit a 3-year high as the industry is retreating toward pre-pandemic highs. This represents nearly half of the workforce and a sign that something needs to change. 

  • Sales Consultant Turnover (non-luxury): Sales Consultant turnover is typically the highest in dealerships. In 2024, turnover increased by thirteen percentage points, the highest jump in years. 

  • Service Advisor Turnover (non-luxury): Service Advisors have the most contact with customers after the sale, making them critical to the long-term success of your dealership. Yet Service Advisors have the second highest turnover in the dealership.  

But this is just a small sampling of the data made available by the ESi-Q & NADA partnership. 

Get the 2025 NADA Dealership Workforce Study for a more comprehensive breakdown of the insights nationally and regionally.   

Why is This Data Important? 

The sheer cost of high turnover can cost a dealership hundreds of thousands of dollars (and in some cases, millions) in lost revenue and incalculable time in recruiting, training, and onboarding.  

Morale suffers and staff synergy must be rebuilt over and over.  

This data provides dealer workforce insights to also help you avoid:   

  • Low CSI due to lost expertise and poor team environment/energy 

  • Constant hiring cycles that drain management resources 

  • Lack of overall engagement due to staff constantly changing 

How ESi-Q Can Help Dealers Strengthen Personnel Decisions 

Even with the challenging stats, it’s not all doom and gloom. 

ESi-Q isn’t just here to reveal the problems…we’re here to help you fix them. 

We give dealers the tools to:  

  • Improve employee satisfaction and increase engagement 

  • Reduce churn and help retain the top talent your store needs 

  • Identify red flags before they are revealed in the exit interview 

  • Track both turnover AND tenure (both are important individual metrics) 

  • Benchmark against national dealership trends to see where your store stacks up 

We love data and we are dedicated to helping turn data into actionable insights that help dealerships grow beyond just the profit margin… 

We are here to help dealerships master the ‘people’ part of business. Hire the best, keep the best.  

Curious how we do this? Click here to learn more about ESi-Q . 

The Data is Clear - Are You Ready to Act? 

Turnover is increasing in roles that impact every dealer. This can affect customer service, sales volumes, F&I backend gross, and the service lane.  

The NADA Dealership Workforce Study gives your store the insights it needs to adapt and adjust to what’s really happening in dealerships all over the country. 

When you understand the numbers, you can change the trajectory of your personnel decisions and be the success story in your market.  

You can be the dealership that knows how to keep the best employees and has the increased bottom line to prove it.  

Are you ready to make a change? Contact ESi-Q today to learn more about how we turn employee research into actionable insights to help your dealership boost productivity, reduce turnover, and more.