The Great Quit: America’s Quitting Revolution

Of all the labor market data the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes, none captures the psychology of American workers quite like the quits rate. Unemployment measures involuntary joblessness — people who want work and cannot find it. The labor force participation rate measures how many people are in the game at all. But the quits rate measures something more elusive: confidence. It measures the willingness of employed Americans to walk away from a paycheck because they believe — rightly or wrongly — that something better awaits.

The data comes from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known universally as JOLTS. Each month, the BLS surveys approximately 21,000 business establishments to measure four fundamental labor flows: hires, quits, layoffs and discharges, and job openings. Together, these four numbers describe the full circulation of the American labor market — how workers enter jobs, leave jobs, get fired from jobs, and how many jobs sit unfilled.

Among these four flows, quits hold a special status. When workers quit in large numbers, it signals that the labor market is strong enough to absorb them — that there are enough open positions, enough signing bonuses, enough competing offers to make the leap worthwhile. When quitting slows to a trickle, it signals the opposite: fear, caution, the instinct to hold on to what you have because nothing better is available. The Federal Reserve watches the quits rate precisely because it captures this behavioral dimension that raw employment counts cannot.

The JOLTS survey began in December 2000, giving us twenty-five years of data on American quitting behavior. In that quarter-century, the quits rate has traced the full arc of twenty-first century economic life: the dot-com bust, the housing boom, the Great Recession, the long recovery, the pandemic shock, and the extraordinary post-pandemic labor market that produced a phenomenon no one had a name for — until it arrived.

The chart below traces the total nonfarm quits rate from 2001 to 2026, using January readings for each year. It is a remarkably expressive line. Unlike unemployment, which tends to spike sharply and recover slowly, the quits rate moves in gentle arcs — rising gradually during expansions as workers gain confidence, and falling during contractions as that confidence evaporates.

In the early 2000s, the quits rate sat between 1.8% and 2.4%, reflecting a labor market that was neither particularly strong nor particularly weak. The 2001 recession and the slow recovery that followed kept it subdued. By 2006–2007, as the housing boom inflated the broader economy, quits climbed back toward 2.1–2.2% — workers in construction, real estate, and related industries were moving freely between jobs.

Then came the Great Recession. The quits rate collapsed to 1.3% in January 2010 — the lowest level in the JOLTS era. That number tells a story no other statistic captures with equal clarity. It says that in January 2010, with unemployment at 9.8% and the economy hemorrhaging jobs, employed Americans were terrified to leave their positions. Quitting was a luxury they could not afford. The fear was rational: with six unemployed workers for every job opening, anyone who voluntarily left a job faced the real possibility of not finding another one for months or years.

The recovery was agonizingly slow. It took until 2015 for the quits rate to return to its pre-recession level of 2.0%. It took until 2019 for it to match the pre-crisis high of 2.3%. For a full decade, American workers quit at rates below the historical norm — a quiet testament to the scarring effects of the Great Recession on worker psychology.

And then, in a compressed burst of activity that startled economists, policymakers, and employers alike, the quits rate did something it had never done before. It surged past all previous records.

In 2021 and 2022, the American labor market experienced something without precedent. The quits rate, which had spent two decades oscillating between 1.3% and 2.4%, broke decisively above its historical range. By January 2022, it stood at 2.9% — the highest level since JOLTS began in 2001, and likely the highest in decades before that.

The raw numbers were staggering. In November 2021, the peak month, 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs. In a single month, more people voluntarily walked away from employment than live in the city of Los Angeles. Over the course of 2021 and 2022, roughly 95 million voluntary separations took place across the American economy — an average of about 4 million per month for two straight years.

The media christened it the “Great Resignation,” and the label stuck. Social media filled with stories of workers quitting toxic jobs, pursuing passion projects, starting businesses, moving to lower-cost cities, or simply refusing to return to pre-pandemic working conditions. The narrative was intoxicating: American workers, transformed by the experience of the pandemic, were taking control of their careers and demanding better.

The reality was more nuanced, and more interesting. Several forces converged simultaneously to produce the quitting surge:

Pent-up quitting from 2020. The pandemic temporarily froze labor mobility. Workers who would have quit in 2020 under normal conditions — to take a better job, to relocate, to change careers — delayed those decisions. When the economy reopened, a backlog of deferred quits flooded the system at once. This alone accounts for a significant fraction of the “excess” quitting in 2021–2022.

A historically favorable market for job-switchers. Job openings surged to 7.0% in January 2022 — roughly double the pre-pandemic level. With nearly two openings for every unemployed worker, the calculus of quitting changed fundamentally. The risk of leaving a job was minimal because the probability of finding a new one was extremely high. Switching jobs also carried a wage premium: workers who changed employers in 2021–2022 saw wage growth of 7–8%, far outpacing the 4–5% gains for those who stayed put.

Sectoral reshuffling. The pandemic permanently altered the demand for labor across industries. Workers left hospitality, retail, and food service for warehouse, logistics, and healthcare jobs that offered higher pay and more stable hours. This was not people dropping out of the workforce — it was people moving within it, from lower-paying to higher-paying sectors. The quits rate in leisure and hospitality exceeded 5% for extended periods, as restaurants and hotels simply could not retain workers against the pull of better-paying alternatives.

Remote work as an exit option. The sudden availability of remote and hybrid positions expanded the effective job market for millions of workers. An accountant in Omaha who previously had access to jobs within commuting distance now had access to remote positions nationwide. This expanded choice set made quitting less risky and switching more attractive.

By every measure, the Great Resignation has ended. The January 2026 quits rate of 2.0% is exactly where it stood in January 2016 and January 2015, firmly within the pre-pandemic range. The decline from 2.9% to 2.0% took roughly four years — a gradual deflation, not a sudden crash.

The cooldown followed a predictable pattern. As the backlog of deferred quits was worked through, as job openings receded from their extraordinary peaks, and as employers adjusted wages upward to retain workers, the incentive to switch diminished. By 2024, the quits rate had returned to 2.1%. By 2025, it hit 2.0%. Workers were no longer fleeing their jobs in record numbers because the extraordinary conditions that made fleeing both necessary and rewarding had largely dissipated.

This trajectory raises an important question: was the Great Resignation a structural break — a permanent change in how Americans relate to work — or was it a transient response to a unique set of economic conditions? The data strongly favor the latter interpretation. The quits rate has returned to its pre-pandemic equilibrium. The labor market conditions that fueled the surge — record job openings, minimal unemployment, large wage premiums for switchers — have moderated. Workers are once again behaving as they did before the pandemic, with a quits rate that reflects normal levels of labor market confidence and mobility.

This does not mean nothing changed. Some legacies of the Great Resignation are likely permanent: the normalization of remote work, the upward reset of wages in formerly low-paying industries, and a heightened employer awareness that retention requires competitive compensation and working conditions. But the act of quitting itself — the raw behavioral data — has reverted to historical norms.

Not all industries experience quitting equally. The variation across sectors is enormous — and deeply informative about the nature of different kinds of work.

The table below ranks twelve major industry sectors by their quits rate as of December 2025, the most recent detailed data available. The spread is remarkable: from 4.5% in leisure and hospitality to 0.5% in the federal government — a nine-to-one ratio. A leisure and hospitality worker quits at nine times the rate of a federal employee. That single ratio captures the entire spectrum of American labor market mobility.

The pattern reveals a fundamental truth about labor markets: quitting is a function of alternatives and switching costs. Industries with low barriers to entry, abundant alternative positions, and relatively interchangeable skills see high quit rates. Industries with specialized skills, pension vesting schedules, security clearances, or other forms of lock-in see low quit rates.

Leisure and hospitality leads the table at 4.5% for straightforward reasons. Restaurant, hotel, and entertainment workers face relatively low switching costs — the skills are portable, the positions are abundant, and the wage differentials between employers can be significant. A line cook at one restaurant can start at another within days. The work is also physically demanding and often low-paid, which increases the incentive to search for better conditions.

Mining and logging at 2.9% reflects the boom-bust dynamics of extractive industries. When commodity prices are high, workers move freely between operations chasing premium wages. The sector is also geographically concentrated, meaning workers in mining-heavy regions have a defined set of employers they rotate among.

Trade, transportation, and utilities at 2.7% captures the high churn of retail and warehouse work. This sector includes everything from cashiers at big-box stores to package handlers at distribution centers — roles that are physically demanding, often entry-level, and abundant enough that workers can move between employers with minimal friction. The rise of e-commerce has expanded warehouse employment but has not fundamentally altered the transient nature of these positions.

Federal government at 0.5% is the mirror image of leisure and hospitality. Federal employees accrue pension benefits that vest over time, receive health insurance that often surpasses private-sector equivalents, and in many cases hold security clearances that are relevant only within government or to government contractors. The cost of leaving is high, and the typical federal employee’s next-best alternative may offer materially worse total compensation. The result is a workforce that rarely quits voluntarily — one in 200 per month, compared to one in 22 in leisure and hospitality.

Financial activities at 1.2% illustrates a different retention mechanism: golden handcuffs. High base salaries, deferred compensation, stock vesting schedules, and the general difficulty of replicating a compensation package at a competitor keep finance workers in place. They may want to quit, but the economic cost of doing so is steep.

Manufacturing at 1.4% reflects both unionization — which provides seniority-based benefits that are lost upon quitting — and the specialized nature of factory work. A machinist trained on a specific production line cannot seamlessly transition to a different facility the way a restaurant server can. The skills are less portable, the training investment is larger, and the union contract often penalizes departure.

Quits are only one piece of the JOLTS puzzle. To understand the full picture of labor market dynamics, we need to see all four flows simultaneously: hires, quits, job openings, and layoffs. Each measures a different dimension of the labor market, and together they tell a story that no single indicator can convey alone.

Hires measure the total number of workers added to payrolls in a given month, expressed as a rate of total employment. This includes new hires from unemployment, job-to-job transitions, and workers entering the labor force for the first time. The hires rate has been remarkably stable over 25 years, fluctuating in a narrower band (3.0% to 4.3%) than any of the other three flows. Even during the Great Recession, when the labor market was in crisis, the hires rate only fell to 3.0–3.1% — employers were still hiring, just less aggressively. The current rate of 3.3% is on the lower end of the historical range, consistent with a labor market that is functioning but not booming.

Job openings are the most volatile of the four flows, and in many ways the most dramatic. The openings rate sat between 2.0% and 3.8% for most of the 2001–2019 period. Then, in the post-pandemic recovery, it exploded. The January 2022 reading of 7.0% was nearly double any previous record. At the peak, there were roughly 11.5 million unfilled positions in the American economy — more than the number of unemployed workers. The ratio of openings to unemployed workers, normally below 1.0, surged above 2.0. This was the fundamental driver of the Great Resignation: workers quit because there were two jobs waiting for every one of them.

The decline in openings since then has been significant. From 7.0% in January 2022 to 4.2% in January 2026, the openings rate has shed 40% of its pandemic-era excess. At 4.2%, it remains slightly above pre-pandemic levels (which averaged roughly 3.5–4.0% in 2018–2019) but is no longer in the stratosphere. The message is one of normalization: there are still plenty of open jobs, but the extreme mismatch of 2021–2022 has resolved.

Layoffs and discharges are, in many ways, the anti-quits indicator. When layoffs are high, the labor market is weak — employers are shedding workers. When layoffs are low, the market is strong — employers are retaining their workforces. The layoffs rate peaked at 1.9% in January 2009, during the worst of the Great Recession. It has been on a structural downtrend for two decades, falling from a 1.3–1.7% range in the early 2000s to a 1.0–1.2% range in recent years. The January 2026 reading of 1.0% is near the all-time low, suggesting that while the labor market has cooled from its 2022 highs, employers remain reluctant to lay off workers.

The relationship between quits and layoffs is one of the most elegant patterns in labor economics. In a strong market, quits are high and layoffs are low — workers are choosing to leave, and employers are trying to keep them. In a weak market, the pattern reverses: quits collapse and layoffs spike. The two lines form a scissors pattern that traces the business cycle with remarkable fidelity. In January 2009, the lines nearly crossed: layoffs hit 1.9% while quits fell to 1.5%, a stark marker of the Great Recession’s severity. By contrast, in January 2022, the gap was at its widest: quits at 2.9% and layoffs at just 1.0% — the very definition of a workers’ market.

The January 2026 snapshot — hires at 3.3%, quits at 2.0%, openings at 4.2%, layoffs at 1.0% — paints a portrait of a labor market that is healthy but no longer exceptional. Consider how each flow has moved from its recent extreme:

Job openings: Down from 7.0% (Jan 2022) to 4.2% (Jan 2026). A 40% decline. The extreme labor shortage that defined the 2021–2022 economy has eased substantially. Employers still have unfilled positions, but the desperation has faded. At 4.2%, the openings rate is roughly where it was in the late 2010s — elevated by historical standards, but within a range that both workers and employers can live with.

Quits: Down from 2.9% (Jan 2022) to 2.0% (Jan 2026). A complete reversion to pre-pandemic norms. Workers are no longer quitting at extraordinary rates because the extraordinary conditions — abundant alternatives, large wage premiums for switching, pent-up demand from 2020 — have dissipated. The Great Resignation is over by any statistical measure.

Hires: Down from 4.3% (Jan 2022) to 3.3% (Jan 2026). This decline is notable because it suggests that employers have shifted from aggressive hiring to maintenance mode. They are replacing workers who leave but not expanding headcount at the pace they were three years ago. This is consistent with a mature expansion where growth is steady but not accelerating.

Layoffs: At 1.0%, essentially unchanged from the record lows of recent years. This is perhaps the most reassuring number in the current data. Despite the cooling in other flows, employers are not cutting workers. The low layoff rate suggests that the labor market adjustment is happening through reduced hiring and slower quitting, not through job losses. Workers are staying put, and employers are keeping them.

Together, these four numbers describe a labor market in equilibrium. The frenzied hiring, quitting, and job-hopping of 2021–2022 has given way to a more settled pattern where workers and employers have found a sustainable balance. It is not a weak labor market — layoffs are at historic lows and openings remain above pre-pandemic levels. But it is no longer the workers’ paradise of the Great Resignation era, when the sheer volume of available positions gave every employed American the leverage to demand more.

Economists and market watchers pay close attention to the quits rate for a reason beyond its descriptive value: it functions as a leading indicator of the broader economy. The logic is straightforward. Workers have information about their own industries and employers that aggregate statistics do not capture. When they sense weakening demand, reduced hours, frozen promotions, or a general thinning of opportunity, they stop quitting. The decline in quits often precedes the official recognition of economic slowdown by months.

The historical record bears this out. The quits rate began declining in 2007 — a full year before the Great Recession was officially dated as beginning in December 2007. By the time the financial crisis hit its acute phase in September 2008, the quits rate had already fallen from 2.1% to 1.8%. Workers sensed the cooling before the data confirmed it.

Similarly, the quits rate began rising in 2014, well ahead of the labor market metrics that would eventually declare the post-recession recovery complete. Workers began quitting at higher rates because they could feel the improvement in their own job prospects — more callbacks, better offers, stronger leverage in salary negotiations — before the headline unemployment rate had fully normalized.

The current reading of 2.0% sits at the long-run average. It is not signaling alarm, but it is not signaling enthusiasm either. Workers are quitting at a normal rate, which implies they see a normal labor market: adequate but not extraordinary. If the quits rate were to fall below 1.7% — as it did in the early stages of both the 2001 and 2008 recessions — it would be a genuine warning sign. For now, it remains in the zone of comfortable normalcy.

There is one more dimension of quitting that deserves attention: its relationship to wages. When workers quit at high rates, they are not merely expressing dissatisfaction with their current employer. They are, in aggregate, reallocating labor toward higher-valued uses. Every quit that results in a better-paying job represents an efficiency gain for the economy — a worker moving from a position where they produce less value to one where they produce more.

During the Great Resignation, this mechanism operated at full throttle. The Atlanta Fed Wage Growth Tracker showed that job-switchers — workers who changed employers — consistently earned wage growth of 7–8% per year, compared to 4–5% for job-stayers. The gap between switcher and stayer wage growth was the widest on record. Quitting was not just an expression of confidence; it was a rational economic strategy. Workers who changed jobs during 2021–2022 captured a wage premium that those who stayed behind could not match.

As the quits rate has normalized, so has the wage premium for switching. By late 2025, the gap between switcher and stayer wage growth had narrowed to roughly 1–2 percentage points — still positive, but no longer the bonanza it was during the Great Resignation. This convergence is another sign that the labor market has returned to its pre-pandemic equilibrium. The extraordinary rewards for quitting have diminished, and so the rate of quitting has diminished with them.

This wage-quits feedback loop is one of the most important dynamics in the labor market. High wages for switchers encourage more quitting, which tightens the labor market further, which pushes wages up again. Conversely, when the premium for switching declines, fewer workers take the leap, which loosens the market, which reduces the premium further. The system is self-correcting, and the current data suggest it has largely corrected.