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A Record 4.5 Million Americans Quit Their Jobs In November (bloomberg.com) 128

Posted by BeauHD from the Great-Resignation dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A record 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November while openings remained elevated, highlighting persistent churn in the labor market. The increase in departures was broad across industries and pushed the quits rate up to 3%, matching the most in data back to 2000. Meanwhile, the number of available positions fell to 10.6 million from an upwardly revised 11.1 million in October, the Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed Tuesday.

The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a rise to 11.1 million job openings. While the drop was the largest since April 2020, vacancies remain well above pre-pandemic levels. The unprecedented level of quits -- including a record 1 million in leisure and hospitality alone -- suggests a lingering struggle for employers to retain talent. Meanwhile, the month's increase in hiring showed companies were able to make at least some headway filling vacancies. The data come ahead of Friday's monthly employment report from the Labor Department, which is currently forecast to show that the U.S. added 420,000 jobs in December. [...] Total hires were little changed in November at 6.7 million. Layoffs and discharges were also steady.
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A Record 4.5 Million Americans Quit Their Jobs In November More

A Record 4.5 Million Americans Quit Their Jobs In November

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  • I want to quit too. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    But there's stuff I like about my job. Such as money and health insurance.

    • I actually love my job -- it sort of found me and involves teaching smart people how to use fun hardware as well as using it myself.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        So you're a teledildonicist?

      • I am pretty happy with my job and workload, the problem is the only way to keep place with inflation is playing musical chairs to get a 'raise.'

    • Re:I want to quit too. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by zeeky boogy doog ( 8381659 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @09:45PM (#62143635)
      And there you have, in a nutshell, why corporate america will sooner die than let America have universal healthcare.

      It takes away what is now one of the top few bludgeons to suppress uppity workers: The threat to you and your family's health if you dare get sick.

    • But there's stuff I like about my job. Such as money and health insurance.

      If you have health insurance, you are literally elite in the USA. The bulk of people quitting don't have access to health insurance and aren't making a lot of money. So all bets are off when facing a pandemic.

      • I have serious doubts about the correctness of that claim.

        The US doesn't have universal healthcare, but it's not like most people don't have it.
        In fact, in any given year, it's usually around 90% of people are insured.

        I.e., if you have healthcare in the US, you aren't elite. You're quite literally normal.

        • I have serious doubts about the correctness of that claim. The US doesn't have universal healthcare, but it's not like most people don't have it. In fact, in any given year, it's usually around 90% of people are insured. I.e., if you have healthcare in the US, you aren't elite. You're quite literally normal.

          You don't even know your own country and what's going on here. You can have insurance and still be unable to use it because of the high cost, copays as well as terms that allow insurance to deny coverage for anything beyond an annual checkup. I've actually seen people denied medical costs for the treatment of animal bites because that treatment didn't fall in the "preventive care" category. From https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/ [kff.org]

          In 2019, 73.7% of uninsured adults said that they were uninsured because the cost of coverage was too high.

          That's just one study out of

          • You don't even know your own country and what's going on here. You can have insurance and still be unable to use it because of the high cost, copays as well as terms that allow insurance to deny coverage for anything beyond an annual checkup.

            You backed that up with a link about uninsured, which are again, a minority of individuals.

            In 2019, 73.7% of uninsured adults said that they were uninsured because the cost of coverage was too high.

            Of course 73.7% of the 10% who are uninsured are uninsured because the cost is too high. What was your point?

            Nobody is playing semantics, you're suffering from an inability to understand what you read.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bigbutt ( 65939 )

          It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. I have dental insurance for example however it doesn’t cover a whole lot beyond general care. I lost a front tooth back when I was in the Marines and paid out of pocket for both bridges, about $6,000 each time.

          I was in the hospital this past year with a punctured intestine and medical insurance paid for all but $5,000 of the bill.

          Fortunately my career is such that the last two expenses were something I could take care of without too much of a probl

          • It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. I have dental insurance for example however it doesn’t cover a whole lot beyond general care. I lost a front tooth back when I was in the Marines and paid out of pocket for both bridges, about $6,000 each time.

            Ya, dental insurance sucks in general. That's a whole different category of shite.
            I have "good" dental, and I still pay out the ass whenever I need work done. For whatever reason, dental insurance in the US sucks ass.

            I was in the hospital this past year with a punctured intestine and medical insurance paid for all but $5,000 of the bill.

            Which is fantastic.

            Fortunately my career is such that the last two expenses were something I could take care of without too much of a problem.

            Even if you couldn't, the latter is something you could pay off, over time, with no interest. Sure, it's not as good as free, but it's also not terrible.

      • The weird thing about the U.S. right now is that everyone has access to quality healthcare. Obamacare ensured us of that. The problem is that in order to deliver quality healthcare to everyone, the only thing they could get passed was a bill that gouged the middle-class. If you're poor you get quality healthcare for free. If you're upper-middle class or higher, the cost of healthcare is negligible. If you're middle class it's a major expense.

        Obamacare is better than what we had before, which is closer to wh

        • Even along the poor lines that are supposed to get health care for free, the picture is problematic. The ACA was an improvement, and in theory, it brings access to the poor.

          But in reality, many remain uninsured, and those insured still cannot get the full benefit of coverage because of high costs, copays, etc. 90% of the population is covered... on paper. The execution of health coverage is what matters.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      I want to quit too. But there's stuff I like about my job. Such as money and health insurance.

      Well I left my last company, but like many of those who quit I went to another company who pay me and provide health insurance. So there really isn't anything stopping you from quitting if your primary reasons are to keep a paycheck and insurance. That just means you cannot retire.

    • Those are not things about your job specifically. They are the basic means of survival. Might sound like splitting hairs, but it is a profound difference.

    • I wonder how many of those people out of work are among the same adventurous doers reportedly quitting their jobs and/or moving to the country and/or buying new homes since the recent economic environment dictates such?

  • If you were on the fence about retiring but already had the funds, then it seems like a good time to check out of the rat race.
    A lot of boomers are probably tired of the COVID hassle and just want to move somewhere warmer.

  • Take this job and shove it [youtu.be].

  • inflation baby (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @09:04PM (#62143557) Journal
    Discussion with boss... Since June 2020, my food is up 30%, gas is up about 80%, and rent is up 20%. You're hiring newbies for as much as you're paying me. Give me a raise or I'm quitting to go to one of your competitors who will pay me as much as those newbies plus more for my experience. Wait. Scratch that. You should have respected me enough to make sure we don't need to have this discussion. Maybe my next employer won't make me ask. Bye.
    • Don't forget that other experienced people have already left so you will need to work harder to fill in for them. Oh and "as a cost cutting measure we are going to [make your life just a little more miserable in some creative way]".

      • Don't forget that other experienced people have already left so you will need to work harder to fill in for them. Oh and "as a cost cutting measure we are going to [make your life just a little more miserable in some creative way]".

        Are you my previous employer? You sound amazingly like them.

    • Discussion with boss... Since June 2020, my food is up 30%, gas is up about 80%, and rent is up 20%.

      That looks like your boss or whoever he listens to on the radio just put their finger on a chart and walked back to the most recent minimum and cherry picked June 2020, the middle of COVID. Why would you do any price analysis STARTING in the middle of COVID 19, the middle of 2020??? June 2020 had almost the lowest oil prices in the past fifteen years, because of COVID related speculation! So are you looking at historically high prices or did you start at a historical low point to get a scary sounding 80%

      • Admittedly, the gas was low then but it is up 15% now over what it was before COVID.

        My food prices never went down in COVID. I track all that I buy and haven't changed my purchase habits. My food bill is up that much despite the fact that the things I buy are almost entirely generic.

        Rent has seen its biggest jumps ever in my area. Home prices are ridiculous as well. Some people seem to think this is good, but I don't see how. I guess if you're willing to move to a cheaper area you could capitalize. Otherwis

    • Your boss is already thinking about buying out that competitor. Or the other way around it really doesn't matter which. Lax or frankly non-existent antitrust law enforcement coupled with decades of your low wages resulting in record profits means it's easy enough to do. Once he owns those competitors he can set wages lower to whatever the bare minimum is needed to keep you functional as an employee. Meanwhile he can raise prices to whatever he wants because he has a de facto Monopoly even if on paper it cou
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Food is up quite a bit I have noticed. Gas, on the other hand, I can't reason why people are complaining about it. I remember taking a photo of an old gas station near my home in 2006, and the posted gas price for regular in TX was $2.73.

        Yesterday in the same region 15 years later, I paid $2.79.

        Rent is nuts. Food is high. $4.50 and up per pound of ground beef, bread is higher, milk is up a lot over the past two years. The cheapest eggs I see are almost $3 a dozen. Milk is $3 a gallon for the standard stuff

        • I've always had a difficult time understanding/comprehending the pissing and moaning about the price of milk. In my household of four we buy milk a gallon at a time and have to freeze at least half of it to keep it from going bad before we can use it up. Are people using milk as a water substitute or something? Even when I was a broke ass teenager with a part time job doubling the price of milk wouldn't have significantly impacted my budget.

      • I use June/July 2020 because that is when I first noticed prices on things that had not gone down during the lockdown start their expected (because of the amount of money dumped into the economy) ramp up.

        A dozen eggs here in Central Florida is at $2. Prior to the pandemic they had hovered around $1 most of the time. Milk has gone up from a relatively steady $2.68 a gallon before the pandemic to $3.49 today. Brand name sodas have gone from routinely being on sale for $1.19 for a 2 liter to $1.89. I purchase

  • Probably thanks to President Biden (Score:4, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @09:22PM (#62143587)

    With the stock market hitting new records,* people's investments have paid off and are now allowing them to retire. Retirees make up the largest percentage of those leaving work.

    Thank you president Biden for all your work making their dreams possible.

    * The S&P 500 had 68 new highs in 2021, the second highest number of new highs under any president. Also, president Biden continues the winning streak of Democratic administrations [marketwatch.com] far outpacing Republican administrations when it comes to stock market performance.

    • If you retire, you're not quitting, you're retiring. I'm not sure that it's counted in the same way, if at all?

      For example, when I retired last year, there was no exit interview as it was obvious why I didn't want to work there anymore, I was able to retire.

      Is this different in the USA?

      • If you retire, you're not quitting, you're retiring. I'm not sure that it's counted in the same way, if at all?

        For example, when I retired last year, there was no exit interview as it was obvious why I didn't want to work there anymore, I was able to retire.

        Is this different in the USA?

        To my knowledge, the count is the total number of people who left a job for any reason. It doesn't matter if you quit, retired, or moved on to another job, you left your original job and that is what is counted.

        Here is an article from October [forbes.com] outlining how baby boomers are leaving jobs by the droves, which in turn affects these numbers. The Pew Research Center had a similar article [pewresearch.org] from 2020.

        • Cool, thanks, good explanation & article.
          I'm not a boomer, being early GenX, but was lucky enough to be able to retire early and comfortably. My older sister, though, is a boomer, and ... is still working as she's not (yet) able to retire comfortably, due to various decisions she's made.

    • Re:Probably thanks to President Biden (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @10:40PM (#62143735)
      The US president barely has any effect on the economy. This has been studied to death. Biden gets zero credit for the current stock market. Same goes for Trump. The economy is determined by longer-term forces (world war? Commodity boom? Technological leap forward?) and how a country is structured (capitalist democracy or socialist oligarchy?).

      Anyone who says “Trump brought us good jobs and a good economy” is basically declaring “My opinion is baseless crap. Please ignore me”. Same goes for Biden or any other president.

      • As a single person, no, but as the leader of a party with a media machine behind it, sure. Trump pushed a huge tax cut through and leaned (with his media partners) on the Fed to keep rates artificially low. The result is a goosed stock market, soaring home prices, and the inflation we're seeing today. He fumbled the COVID response which ballooned unemployment and crushed whole sectors of the economy. Biden hasn't done much in his first year. COVID is getting bad again, the rich are still buying up ho

        • Trump pushed a huge tax cut through and leaned (with his media partners) on the Fed to keep rates artificially low.

          Ahh that explains why the European technology companies listed on the AMS stock market spiked. Thank you Trump for cutting taxes to someone none of us have anything to do with! /sarcasm

          No you're making the same mistake as the GP, you think that this tax break has had an influence whereas in reality there are far larger and way more powerful market forces at work.

          Wait ... Sorry I'm reading and addressing you post line by line. You said straight after that Trump crushed the economy? But the stock market was u

    • If those retirees are relying on future market performance to be the same as the recent past their dream will become a nightmare.

    • "Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same numbers to draw different conclusions" --Evan Esar (b. 1899)

  • Arstechnica reports that fish can be trained to drive.

    https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]

    Perfect solution for that shortage of truckers.

  • Hospitality Industry (Score:4, Insightful)

    by battingly ( 5065477 ) on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @10:25PM (#62143703)
    Would you want a job right now that entails facing, at close quarters, a steady stream of strangers all day long? Nobody else does either.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Especially if part if your job is to tell people about the mask rules that your employer, the city, or the county imposed, and to get abuse and threats of violence in return.

    • Re:Hospitality Industry (Score:4, Informative)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot.worf@net> on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @11:47PM (#62143873)

      Would you want a job right now that entails facing, at close quarters, a steady stream of strangers all day long? Nobody else does either.

      Not just that, but having to face idiots and overly entitled people and karens and other people is what makes it miserable.

      Facing people is one thing - most are respectful and most will keep a reasonable distance apart. It's the idiots that however ruin the whole thing. Just an anti-masker going off on their tirade is easily enough to make someone quit. And since these idiots only intend to cause a scene and be as big an asshole as possible, you can't even help the unfortunate people stuck behind them.

      it's a miserable no-win situation. Dealing with the public is unpleasant enough Not that the person at the desk can even do anything since the policy is dictated either by the government or management, and the poor lackey they go off in front of has zero power to alter or do anything about.

  • A large number of baby boomers are retiring. Some because they're just too old to work, some because they're being forced into retirement to make way for younger employees, and finally some because they're trying to avoid getting covid-19.

    As they retire they free up better jobs that Gen X/M/Z are moving into in favor of the shitty restaurant and hospitality jobs they used to have.

    It's not really a great resignation. It's a bunch of people getting somewhat or slightly better jobs because those jobs a

  • Lucky to have lost my job at the beginning (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Wednesday January 05, 2022 @12:46AM (#62144001) Homepage

    In June 2020, my company was so cash-strapped that it laid off people left and right. I could see my turn coming and started looking for a job, and got one just before my layoff meeting. The company was awful to its employees, so I was not in the least sad to say good-bye.

    My new company was, as it happens, in the mortgage industry, which has been booming for the last couple of years. It couldn't have been a better move. It's a great company that treats its people well. We're all remote, with no expectation of going back to the office.

    Everybody else is quitting now, I was lucky to get in on the early wave.

  • Everyone I know that "quit" their job in November was being forced out for refusing to get one of the "vaccines" (that don't prevent catching, spreading or dieing from COVID). Is it possible that part of the reason for so many resignations was the combination of federal mandates putting pressure on companies and employees?
    • That omission makes me mad. If I wasn't a lazy Slashdot reader I would follow the link to see if the ellipses denote more detailed treatment of the likely causes of these job losses/exits. However I maintain a deep and abiding faith in the summaries posted here (when I can be bothered to read them before commenting) always being all-encompassing and fully inclusive of nuance. /joke

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