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“quits”, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls them, hit a high in September, with over 4.3 million people leaving their jobs, and was followed by a modest reduction of that trend in October and November.

n Tuesday the labor department said there were 10.6m job openings at the end of November and 6.9 million unemployed people – 1.5 jobs per unemployed person. The number of quits hit a new high of 4.5m.

The top reasons cited by experts continue to be lack of adequate childcare and health concerns about Covid

The wage increase comes as several museum employees said the morale of some guards had sunk because they felt worn out and undervalued while working in often difficult circumstances.

The Met’s main building on Fifth Avenue is now served by a staff of some 300 full-time guards versus the 404 that had been assigned there before the pandemic

Under the new wage agreement, existing guards who were being paid $15.51 an hour were given raises and are now being paid $17 an hour. District Council 37 said that average pay among guards at the museum was around $20 an hour.

From April 2021 to March 2022, a period in which quit rates reached post-pandemic highs, the majority of workers switching jobs (60%) saw an increase in their real earnings over the same month the previous year.

2.5% of workers – about 4 million – switched jobs on average each month from January to March 2022. This share translates into an annual turnover of 30% of workers – nearly 50 million – if it is assumed that no workers change jobs more than once a year. It is higher than in 2021, when 2.3% of workers switched employers each month, on average. About a third (34%) of workers who left a job from January to March 2022 – either voluntarily or involuntarily – were with a new employer the following month.

rom April 2020 to March 2021, some 51% of job switchers saw an increase in real earnings over the same months the previous year. On the other hand, among workers who did not change employers, the share reporting an increase in real earnings decreased from 54% over the 2020-21 period to 47% over the 2021-22 period. Put another way, the median worker who changed employers saw real gains in earnings in both periods, while the median worker who stayed in place saw a loss during the April 2021 to March 2022 period.

Half or more of the increasing gap in wages among American workers over the last 40 years is attributable to the automation of tasks formerly done by human workers, especially men without college degrees, according to some of his recent research.

tax changes to pursue “labor-friendly innovations.”

the technological shift evolved as growth in postsecondary education slowed and companies began spending less on training their workers. “When technology, education and training move together, you get shared prosperity,” said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. “Otherwise, you don’t.”

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on people who left their jobs shows that people working in transportation and manufacturing quit at a lower rate than people working in professional and business services, and below the overall private industry average. Among industries with lower wages, hospitality did see a high level of resignation and job changes, though the industry typically has very high turnover (up to 70% to 80% yearly).

Nikolaidis’s research shows that some of the strongest determinants of lower mood after covid-19 were external social circumstances, including income or economic distress, as well as the person’s mental and socioeconomic conditions prior to the pandemic. People working in low-wage and hourly jobs have long expressed significant stress associated to their work, and their burnout epidemic arguably pre-dates covid-19.

The US administration seems aware of the looming crisis, and has proposed a mental health strategy with an overall budget of about $1 billion for 2023, to provide mental health services, recruit a mental health workforce, provide support to frontline health workers, and strengthen the role of community behavioral health clinics.

Wage transparency laws are a trend in the liberal states of the US. Seven states have now passed laws requiring employers to list salary ranges in job postings.