Danielle Kurtzleben celebrates new job-quitting numbers:
This is great news because the quits rate is generally taken as a sign of how current workers feel the job market is — if they feel they can easily find a job elsewhere, they are more likely to leave their current work. If the job market looks terrifying, they are more likely to cling to even a job they hate for dear life.
Ben Casselman also praises this development:
Voluntary quits, which don’t include retirements, have been rising steadily for the past two years and are now back — more or less — to normal: September’s figure is almost exactly equal to the average level in the five years leading up to the recession. The rising number of quits is good news for several reasons. It’s a sign of confidence. Quitting your job almost always entails some risk, even if you have a new one lined up, so workers’ increasing willingness to do so suggests they think the job market is getting better. Changing jobs is also an important source of wage growth, particularly for younger workers. And job turnover of all kinds acts as a kind of lubricant in the job market, as employees who leave jobs create opportunities for others.
Job openings are relatively high:
Job openings declined to 4.7 million in September from 4.9 million in August. Job openings in August were the highest since 2001, indicating that this component of the JOLTS report is also near one of the best readings in years.
Michael Strain adds that “the number of job openings is helpful because we can use it to construct a measure of the number of unemployed workers seeking a job for every job opening”:
That ratio is now around two — there are roughly two job seekers for every job opening — down from nearly seven during the darkest days of the Great Recession. So good news on both fronts. But let’s not get too excited: The quits rate is still lower than we would like it to be in a healthier labor market, and the number of job seekers per job opening still higher. The labor market recovery remains unfinished, judged both by these and other measures.
The Dish 