Employers report about 10.9 million openings, well above pre-pandemic averages.
Some 4.3 million people quit or changed jobs in December – down from November’s all-time high but still near record levels, as the labor market remained unsettled and the omicron variant swept through the United States. Employers reported some 10.9 million job openings in a survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, well above pre-pandemic averages. December proved to be an incredibly disruptive month for the labor market. Parents scrambled to navigate their work lives as schools and day cares closed due to growing virus cases. Employees grappled with sudden outbreaks at work, with little of the social safety net protections or pandemic-controlling measures that helped cushion the blow from earlier waves. And the vaccine-evading omicron variant shook the nation’s confidence that a future without the virus was on the near horizon. These forces magnified the desire for many workers to quit their jobs. At least 4 million workers resigned each month during the second half of 2021, with many of them departing to find work that had better pay, better benefits or more flexible schedules. While the pandemic initially was marked by mass joblessness – more than 20 million people lost their jobs in its earliest days, many temporarily – 2021 was defined by a strong labor market recovery as well as complaints by employers about difficulty finding available workers. That shortage has meant that many companies have been racing to compete with each other for workers, raising wages, adding cash bonuses and sweetening the pot in other ways to try to attract applicants. And that in turn has created a climate for workers to have more leverage and options than at perhaps any other time in recent history. Nick Bunker, an economist at the jobs site Indeed.com, said that the data showed that the omicron did not have a big effect on demand for workers in December. “It really paints this picture of a job-switching boom,” he said. The firm’s own data on the volume of job postings showed that the bigger omicron hit took place in January, he said. That’s when a record number of Americans missed work because they were sick or they were taking care of people who were sick. Industries with the highest levels of workers quitting or leaving for other jobs in December were accommodation and food services, with 6.1 percent of workers quitting, retail (with 4.9 percent quitting), trade, transportation and utilities (3.8 percent), and professional and business services (3.7 percent). The percentage of workers who were laid off in the month also reached a record low in the 20-plus year history of the survey, at 0.8 percent, an indication that employers were holding tightly to workers amid the recent shortages.
