Workers are in a classic sellers’ market. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:
Workers come out ahead, a phenomenon not seen in many decades, as desperate employers poach workers from each other amid widespread labor shortages.
The number of workers who quit jobs to work for another company, or to stay home and fix up the house or take care of the kids or who feel like they don’t have to work anymore after booking big gains in their stocks or cryptos, or whatever, spiked in November to a record of 4.53 million (seasonally adjusted).
In the private sector, “quits” spiked to a record of 4.31 million, 30.6% higher than in November 2019, a year when the job market had also been hot and the number of quits had reached record levels. Private sector quits accounted for over 95% of total quits. Only about 216,000 folks quit jobs at federal, state, and local government agencies.
This is not based on online job postings that can be all over the place, but on a survey of the payroll departments of 21,000 nonfarm businesses and government entities by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released today in its JOLTS report.