Quitters: 3% of the American workforce quit in August

Quitters: 3% of the American workforce quit in August

10/12/21 8:00PM

Almost 3% of the American workforce, around 4.3 million people, said "I quit" in August — a record high. In the leisure sector specifically, that number was more like 6% of the workforce.‍

Job buffet

‍People tend not to quit during times of distress (like 2009, or April last year), and so such a high number of quits is, in some ways, a positive sign for the economy.

The record levels of "I quit" also make sense in the context of the other dataset that's near a record high — job openings. With more than 10 million jobs open, quitters clearly feel confident that they'll be able to move onto greener pastures.

For businesses trying to fill open positions, this news is probably less exciting. There are already labor shortages in a number of industries — most notably in those sectors with lots of public contact and relatively low wages, like retail, leisure and hospitality. With quit rates high in all of those sectors, those shortages probably aren't going anywhere.

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Between a top-spot finish in the group stage, a sweeping performance against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the round of 32, and the president’s controversial intervention, Monday evening’s USMNT game against Belgium had, to put it lightly, shaped up into a box-office clash.

And though the US players’ performance on the pitch might not have lived up to the high drama off it, American soccer fans certainly showed up. According to early estimates, the 4-1 defeat against Belgium was the most watched soccer telecast in US history, hauling some 40 million viewers on average across the coverage on Fox and Telemundo.

That may be a record tally in the US for the sport that much of the world calls some variant of “football” — besting the 36.2 million who tuned in to watch the team’s previous knock-out match — but it’s still peanuts in comparison to the sport that shares the same name in the States.

World cup viewers chart — Sherwood News

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