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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

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.

California, where many companies are based, passed laws that require greater diversity on corporate boards — and these appear to have had an impact. One, passed in 2018, requires boards of public companies with their principal executive office in the state to have at least two female directors, and the other, passed in 2020, says boards must have one or more directors from an “underrepresented community,” which includes people of several races and ethnic groups and people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Other states have introduced legislation that would require boards to have a certain number of women.