US Quit Rates: They’ve fallen but still historically high

As the year 2021 commenced, expectations that job quitting would decline were high – and it did. Nevertheless, any hope of attaining pre-pandemic levels has since dissipated; Indeed’s recent data shows that job resignations are still higher than many employers desire. Though not as elevated as in late 2020, quit rates remain above prior pandemic figures.

November of last year saw a quit rate that was 16% greater than the average for 2019, particularly in terms of leisure and hospitality. Even more staggering is how it surpassed October’s number, which marked the initial spike since March 2022! It appears that people are becoming increasingly eager to disengage from their jobs.

The U.S. Department of Labor recently reported that the quits rate among American employees in November totaled 2.7%, representing 4.2 million workers who left their job roles—0.1% higher than the previous month’s data shows us that while it did decrease from its peak earlier this year, as CNBC reports, these figures remain at historically elevated levels overall.

The uplifting of quit rates has an immediate, positive impact on wages; as employees usually seek positions that offer more substantial salaries. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta noted in a study that people who transitioned to new jobs experienced an average 7.7% increase in pay while those who stayed with their current employers observed just a 5.5% rise in salary.

To conclude, as Indeed puts it, a noteworthy point is that employers haven’t been letting go of the workers they have. That being said, over the last 21 months – even before 2020 began – layoffs rates have stayed very low at less than one percent; an all-time low!