“I quit!”
Employers heard this phrase on loop in 2021, with nearly 40 million Americans quitting their jobs in search of better compensation, benefits and work-life balance — and it seems the
Yet some states have been hit harder than others by the great resignation — personal finance management website WalletHub, found that in January alone, some states are witnessing resignation rates over 1.5 times higher than last year’s overall rate. For example, New Hampshire and Vermont quit rates now stand at 4.20%, while the 2021 average hovered around 2.62% to 2.64%. However, states like Washington and Pennsylvania have seen a slight drop in resignations by as much as 0.33%.
“As the economy is recovering from the effects of the pandemic, millions of Americans are quitting their jobs each month,” says Jill Gonzalez, an analyst at WalletHub. “This trend is determined by the desire to get away from the careers that were most impacted by COVID-19, but also by the incentives available for changing jobs — COVID has shown employees that they can successfully work from home, so they're not eager or willing to go back to the office full time.”
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States whose major employers are in the food and hospitality industries, such as Alaska and Wyoming, are bound to see higher quit rates due to frontline work being the most impacted by COVID. On the other hand, states like New York or Washington carry more industries that can shift to remote work, hence less resignations, explains Gonzalez.
Still, she notes that while these resignation rates are fairly high, the U.S. may see this trend slow down in the coming months as more workers settle into jobs they are searching for now. This “great resignation” can also be considered a “great reshuffling,” since many workers who quit their jobs are also finding their way to employers who prioritize flexibility and well-being.
Still, some states are seeing higher rates of reshuffling than others. Here are 20 states with the highest and lowest job resignation rates, according to
