JOLTs Job Quits

JOLTS job quits count employees who voluntarily left a job, not layoffs, meaning employer-initiated exits, retirements, or location transfers. They come from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, a monthly employer survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It covers private nonfarm workplaces plus civilian federal, state, and local government units in the 50 states and District of Columbia. The headline is the quits rate, quits divided by employment times 100, a gauge of workers' willingness or ability to change jobs.

Quits cover the entire reference month, the calendar month the data describe, while openings count only the last business day. Each release arrives about a month after the reference month at 10:00 AM Eastern Time, on dates set by the Bureau of Labor Statistics schedule. It also publishes openings, hires, quits, layoffs and discharges, other separations, and total separations as counts and rates by industry, four regions, and size class. The newest month is preliminary, the prior month is revised, and five years are revised each January for updated employment, seasonal patterns, and special adjustments.

Total separations combine three flows, while openings and hires give demand context for quits.

• Quits: voluntary employee-initiated exits, the confidence and turnover signal.
• Layoffs and discharges: involuntary employer-initiated exits, the distress signal.
• Other separations: retirements, location transfers, disability exits, and deaths, the residual structural piece.

In November 2021 quits rose by 370,000 to a series high of 4.5 million, with the rate at 3.0%, as published on January 4, 2022. Openings fell to 10.6 million that same release, while hires held at 6.7 million and layoffs at 1.4 million. Total separations rose to 6.3 million, so quits drove the rise, not employer cuts, while other separations held at 377,000. Gains led in accommodation and food services at 159,000, with health care and transport also up, spread across the Northeast, South, and Midwest.

1. Nonresponse weighting: respondent weights are scaled up so each detailed group keeps its total frame employment. Missing items are filled from similar firms in the same industry and growth group.
2. Benchmarking: weighted employment is ratio-adjusted to larger payroll employment totals, so estimates track full employment.
3. Birth and death model: estimates add jobs from new and closing firms missed by the survey.
4. Alignment: hires minus separations are forced to match the larger survey employment trend by splitting the gap.
5. Seasonal adjustment: the X-13ARIMA-SEATS program removes weather, holiday, and school-year patterns using data through the newest month.
6. Rates: the quits rate is quits divided by employment times 100; for example, 400 quits with 20,000 jobs is 2.0% (illustrative).