10.22.21 – Business Report –
Kentucky, Idaho, South Dakota and Iowa reported the highest increases in the rates of workers who quit their jobs in August, with more than 4% of workers leaving their positions, according to a new glimpse of quit rates in the labor market released today.
In Louisiana, 3% of workers resigned in August, on par with more than than 20 other states, The Washington Post reports. The largest jump in the number of quitters happened in Georgia, with 35,000 more people leaving their jobs.
The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a portrait of August’s labor market, with historic levels of people leaving jobs and a near-record number of job openings showing the leverage workers have in the new economy. It offers the first detailed insight into the state-by-state geography of this year’s Great Resignation.
Nick Bunker, an economist at the online jobs platform Indeed, says it’s notable that more rural states had the highest quit rates.
“Service-sector jobs tend to be concentrated in more dense, urban parts of the country, so to see the quits rate pick up in other places was interesting,” he says. That “may be a sign there’s more competition in those parts of the country than other parts.”
Read the full story and see a map of which states have the most resignations.