A record 4.5 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This pushed the layoff rate to 3%, equivalent to the peak in September. Workers were more likely to quit their jobs in the hospitality sector, which had by far the highest exit rate at 6.1% in November, as were those in the health care sector.
Figures in transportation, warehouses and utilities also increased.
Workers have continued to quit work at a historic rate. Low-wage industries directly affected by the pandemic continued to be the source of much of the increase in quits, ”said Nick Bunker, research director at Indeed Hiring Lab, in comments by e -mail.
The big question for 2022 is whether this momentum will persist. The high quits rate Data for November released on Tuesday does not yet take into account the arrival of the Omicron variant on US shores, which has pushed infections on the rise. and put many workers at risk of contracting the virus in the workplace.
Case in point, the UCLA Labor Center said in a report also released on Tuesday that nearly a quarter of fast food workers in the Los Angeles area have contracted Covid in the past 18 months. Less than half of them had been informed by their employers that they had been potentially exposed to the virus.
Including layoffs and discharges, the total number of terminations was 6.3 million in November.
Hotels and restaurants saw the biggest increase in departures, while also seeing the biggest drop in open jobs, the data showed. America had 10.6 million jobs to fill in November, down slightly from just over 11 million jobs opened in October. Available jobs in the United States peaked at 11.1 million last July.
Positions in finance and insurance, as well as in the federal government, increased in November.
Hires were little changed at 6.7 million and that paints a positive picture of the labor market:
“People who quit are taking other jobs, not leaving the workforce,” said Heidi Shierholz, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute in a tweet Tuesday. “On net, the labor market is gaining a ton of jobs every month.”