TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — The Great Resignation continues across the U.S., with November now the fifth month in a row of record-breaking numbers of Americans leaving their jobs.
Since July, 21.4 million workers have quit, with 4.5 million in November alone, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the highest amount so far, an increase over October’s quit count, when the number had decreased slightly to 4.2 million from September’s 4.4 million.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover report for November 2021 said job openings decreased 10.6 million. Hiring was relatively unchanged, with 6.7 million Americans starting new jobs, compared to 6.3 million separations. Job separations include quits, layoffs, terminations and retirements.
In October, 11.1 million jobs opened and 6.5 million Americans were hired, making the November a slight improvement in the number of new hires.
“Within separations, the quits rate increased to 3.0 percent, matching a series high last seen in September,” according to BLS.
The biggest number of quits in November were in the food services industry, followed by health care and social assistance. 159,000 food service workers quit.
BLS said 1.4 million were laid off or discharged in November, in addition to the 4.5 million who quit their jobs. In terms of net employment gains across the U.S., BLS said a gain did, in fact, occur, though it includes workers who may have been hired and separated from employment multiple times during 2021.
“Over the 12 months ending in November 2021, hires totaled 74.5 million and separations totaled 68.7
million, yielding a net employment gain of 5.9 million,” BLS said.
The quits data, as it’s called by the BLS, comes out ahead of the national job numbers report. National employment and unemployment data, covering December 2021, will come out on Jan. 7. Florida-specific data will be released by the state Department of Economic Opportunity on Jan. 21.
