What demographics are seeing the most job turnover?
Yahoo Finance’s Denitsa Tsekova breaks down the demographics and the rate at which workers are quitting.
Video transcript
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- Welcome back. Well, with the US job quitting rate reaching new highs, blue-collar workers seem to be the ones driving the movement, according to one survey. Here to discuss is Yahoo Finance's Denitsa Tsekova. Denitsa, thank you so much for being here. And you say low-wage earners are some of the ones who are driving these moves.
DENITSA TSEKOVA: The workers that have been changing jobs seem to be more lower-wage workers. As you said, the quits rate hit a new record high in August. But really, the lower-wage industries were the ones leading the way. We saw food and accommodation having the highest quit rate in August. This is 6.8%. That rate has been elevated for quite some time.
Then the second industry that we saw a similar increase is retail and trade. The quits rate there was 4.7%. These, of course, are industry that have relatively high turnover in normal times as well. But the levels we are seeing now is well above pre-pandemic levels and kind of the usual rates we would see.
So interestingly, we also see that the job helping that is happening is meaning that a lot of the workers quitting are actually switching, and they're going to other jobs and maybe better opportunities. And we're also seeing a significant increase in wages for lower-income workers and workers with lower level of education. This is based on data by the Atlanta Fed. So potentially, some of those workers are moving to jobs with better pay and better opportunities.
And another trend that we're seeing that is playing into that whole picture is that many unemployed workers are not yet returning to their jobs or finding new ones. We've seen that the transition from unemployment to employment has been lower than in typical months. This is, of course, taking into account how high the job openings level have been. So maybe employers are competing for less workers that are already in the labor market.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: So Denitsa, I'm wondering, though, if there's any sign that this is just temporary, or do you see this continuing going forward? Because if it does, you know, this country is going to continue to have a big labor shortage problem.
DENITSA TSEKOVA: Yeah. According to the experts we spoke with that in the near future this may continue being the case. The data we have is lagging two months behind, so we'll probably continue to see it. And it's mostly driven by the high level of job openings and really the high demand. And as long as that is the case, those quits rates may remain high.
The questions that I've asked and it's kind of unclear, it's what happens after that when maybe those kind of job openings slow down a bit and there isn't that much of a demand whether workers will continue with that behavior? But of course, along with the demand, there are many other things and reasons workers quit. Quits rates are elevated in industries that are consumer-facing, so there is still COVID fears. Employers are also expanding opportunities easing restrictions, so workers may be finding better opportunities, career changes, industry changes, and things like this. So we'll continue to monitor and see where that trend goes.
- OK. Yahoo Finance's Denitsa Tsekova, thank you so much for that report.
