
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, according to the US Labor Department the number of people voluntarily quitting their jobs set an all time record of 4.5 million in November. That’s an increase of 370,000 people who quit.
There were big increases in the health care and social assistance fields, as well as the transportation, warehousing and utilities sectors and all four U.S. regions reported rises in the number of people quitting their jobs.
“The historic rates of quitting continued through the end of 2021,” said Nick Bunker, the director of research at the job services company Indeed Hiring Lab. “Workers continued to switch jobs in light of the many opportunities the current labor market provides, with the private-sector quits rate hitting an all-time high of 3.4 percent. Of course, whether these conditions continue into 2022 is one of the biggest questions for the year ahead.”
Not surprisingly lower-wage sectors directly affected by the coronavirus pandemic continue to have higher levels of quitting, Bunker said, adding that the so-called quits rate in the hospitality sector was 6.9 percent. There were also large declines in job openings in that sector, as well as the construction and nondurable goods manufacturing industries.
Job openings, a measure of labor demand, dropped by 529,000 to a still very high 10.6 million on the last day of November.