With inflation at the highest point in decades and as the holidays approached, some 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November, according to stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That’s the highest number of its kind since December 2000.
The largest increases in employees quitting were in the hospitality and food service sectors, followed by health care and social assistance, as well as transportation, warehousing and utilities, according to the BLS.
According to the agency, the numbers reflect the high demand for workers, who in turn weren’t as willing to put up with the jobs they had.
While pandemic-induced wanderlust and a wealth of available jobs were arguably factors prompting many workers to pack it in, there are others at play. Thousands of employees across the country, including many in the healthcare field, either quit or were forced out of their jobs in the fall for not submitting to the Biden Administration’s controversial vaccine mandates.
There’s another key caveat: The record number of “quits” was back in November, when the tap of government assistance was still flowing, and when few were aware of the COVID-19 Omicron variant.
Additionally, the child tax credit expanded by the Biden Administration in July made families making less than $150,000 a year, and single parents making less than $112,500 a year, eligible for checks worth $3,600 per child. Some critics have declared that such payouts discouraged people from working.