The resignation wave keeps getting taller
The Great Resignation wave has likely yet to crest.
It certainly hasn’t in Texas and, with omicron on the rise , seems likely to keep building.
The Labor Department recently reported that 4.5 million American workers — a full 3 percent — voluntarily left their jobs in November, tying the record set in September. Among private-sector companies, the quit rate was 3.4 percent, also a record.
Meanwhile, November was the sixth straight month in which national job openings topped 10 million as unemployment rates continue to drop, meaning there are about 1.5 available jobs for each of the nation’s 6.9 million unemployed workers.
Texas continues to account for a substantial portion of the national resignation wave, with the rate of voluntary quits consistently nearing the state’s record, which was set in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
All told, roughly 450,000 Texas workers quit their jobs in October, according to the Labor Department. Only Colorado had a larger share of its workforce voluntarily leave jobs over the same period.
Historically, Texans have typically quit their jobs at faster rates than in other states, said Parker Harvey, principal economist at Workforce Solutions, a regional workforce development agency. Similarly, the rate of new employee hires, as well as Texas’ employment growth rate, has also typically run ahead of national averages due to, among other things, the energy sector.
Many employers in the state are feeling the pinch and struggling to keep or replace workers from bartenders and foremen to nonprofit managers and pastors.
The recent Labor Department data largely predate the surge of omicron that has already begun to ravage communities, shutter businesses and cause hospitalizations to spike seven-fold in Houston and many other parts of the country.
Previous COVID-19 waves have prompted mass exoduses from restaurants, bars and other areas of the leisure and hospitality sector. And economists — including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell — have said it’s entirely possible that omicron will follow the pattern.
“It’s a pandemic on top of a pandemic,” Julie Jenkins, human resources manager for BakerRipley, one of the region’s largest charity organizations, said recently. “On a scale of 1 to 10 — 1 being not of concern, 10 being cataclysmic — I’d say we are at a 7 or 8.”
“Things are getting really concerning,” she added.
But not all see the wave of resignation as a bad thing. Difficult for business owners? Sure. But part of a broader reorienting of the American economy that better prioritizes workers and their needs.
“Workers being able to quit their jobs to take better jobs is a very good thing and signals an economy with healthy dynamism,” wrote Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. “The dynamic we are seeing of a high quit rate combined with strong job growth is absolutely something to celebrate.”
In other words: American workers are fed up and acting accordingly. Until the first part of that sentence changes, the second is unlikely to either.