A robust labor market gave Americans the confidence to quit their jobs last year, especially in some Western states.
Workers voluntarily left their jobs 4.2 million times each month, on average, in 2022, up about 20% from 2019, before the pandemic took hold in the U.S. But workers weren’t equally confident about their prospects for quickly finding new employment across the country.
In much of the West and South, people quit their jobs at higher rates than average late last year, according to Labor Department data. Meanwhile, employees in Northeast states such as New York and Massachusetts were more reluctant to turn in resignations.
Nationwide, employees who quit their jobs had ample choices to find new ones. There were 11 million unfilled jobs at the end of December, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.4% in January, a 53-year low, the Labor Department said.
Employees in low-wage industries, such as food service and retail, were most likely to voluntarily leave their jobs. The rate at which U.S. workers quit their jobs, a seasonally adjusted 2.7% in December, cooled from a year earlier, but remained above pre pandemic levels.
Quitting, seen as a measure of confidence in the labor market, was especially elevated in the Mountain West.
Idaho led the nation with the highest rate of resignations in December at 4%, which was also its highest in records going back to 2000, according to the Labor Department. Nearby states Utah, Montana, and Wyoming had rates nearly as elevated. The quit rate is voluntary departures, except retirements, as a share of total employment.
In Colorado, the total number of resignations rose 26% in December from a year earlier.
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Colorado has seen the largest rise in quits at +26% in December, compared with a year earlier
Vermont has seen the largest drop in quits at –33.3% in December, compared with a year earlier
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Southern states, such as Georgia and Tennessee, also had quit rates well above the national average in December, though the level of resignations had declined from a year earlier.
“The higher quit rates in those states indicate that their labor markets were very robust and that their workers felt like they had a lot of leverage and could easily get another job,” said Adam Kamins, director of regional economics at Moody’s Analytics.
He added that states with the highest levels of quitting were also those with economies that recovered the quickest from the pandemic, as many of them had relatively fewer restrictions on business activity in 2020, and benefited from growing populations.
Early in the pandemic, some cities in the West and South attracted Americans seeking to spend more time outdoors or in warmer climates. Migration into some of those states has more recently slowed, Mr. Kamins said, as the cost of living rose, especially home prices.
“Slower migration into Idaho and Utah could mean that some workers, in leisure and hospitality for example, maybe saw that the grass is greener elsewhere in the country, so they left their jobs,” he said.
Whether workers are willing to leave their jobs can largely depend if other opportunities are available.
States such as West Virginia, Louisiana, and South Carolina had above-average rates of quitting late last year and many available jobs. West Virginia had the highest openings, as a share of total positions, at 9.1% in December, followed closely by Louisiana at 8.7% and South Carolina at 7.7%
New York had the lowest rate of job openings in December at 4.6%, followed by New Jersey and Connecticut. New York also had the lowest quit rate of any state in December at 1.8%, followed by Massachusetts and New Jersey, both at 1.9%. California’s quit rate was also low at 2.1%.
Those states’ economies had slower recoveries from the pandemic and haven’t fully recovered jobs in the lower-wage service sector, where openings and quitting tend to be highest.
“People are still not coming to work in person in cities like New York City the way they had been, so that affects restaurants and other consumer-facing industries, and it just means workers don’t have as many options available to them,” Mr. Kamins said.