Great Resignation: What It Means for Employers

What it means in practice

Where the term comes from. "Great Resignation" is a label from public commentary, not a category BLS publishes. BLS's own Monthly Labor Review article by Maury Gittleman (July 2022) puts the phrase in quotation marks and says the rise in quits "has been called" the Great Resignation in the popular press. A second Monthly Labor Review article by Vincent Amanor-Boadu (November 2022) attributes the term to Anthony Klotz. Because the phrase has no official start or end date, this page uses it for the 2021-2022 period and anchors every figure to a BLS reference month.

How BLS counts quits. The JOLTS definitions describe quits as employees who left voluntarily; retirements and transfers to other locations are reported as other separations, and involuntary separations initiated by the employer are layoffs and discharges. According to the JOLTS technical note, the survey is a stratified random sample of about 21,000 nonfarm business and government establishments, and the quits rate is computed like the separations rate: the number of quits divided by employment, multiplied by 100. As an illustration, a 50-person business where one employee quits in a month has a monthly quits rate of 2.0 percent (1 / 50 x 100). The JOLTS FAQ adds that the first estimate for each month is preliminary and that the prior 5 years of data are revised each year, so 2021-2022 figures quoted in 2022 can differ from the series BLS publishes today.

The 2021-2022 surge, as first reported. BLS reported in The Economics Daily on January 6, 2022 that quits rose 370,000 over the month to 4.5 million in November 2021, the highest level since the data were first produced in December 2000, compared with 3.5 million in November 2019. Gittleman's July 2022 article gave the record quits rate as 3.0 percent, first reached in November 2021 and matched in December 2021. Rick Penn and Eric Nezamis, writing in the Monthly Labor Review in June 2022, reported 47.8 million quits for 2021, 33 percent more than the 35.9 million in 2020 and above the previous annual high of 42.2 million in 2019. Quits made up 69.3 percent of total separations in 2021, the highest share ever recorded.

2022 and the revised series. In the Monthly Labor Review in May 2023, Rick Penn and Victor Huang reported 50.6 million quits in 2022, against 47.7 million in 2021, with a monthly peak of 4.5 million in April 2022. Quits were 68 to 73 percent of total separations from April 2021 through 2022, compared with an average of 59 percent from 2015 to 2019. In the currently published seasonally adjusted quits rate series, the rate reached 3.0 percent in November 2021 and again in April 2022; the quits level series shows 4,453,000 in November 2021 and 4,499,000 in April 2022. For comparison, the rate was 2.3 percent in every month of 2019 except February and July, when it was 2.4 percent.

Industry differences. Gittleman's article shows seasonally adjusted quits rates rising from April 2020 to November 2021 from 3.8 to 6.9 percent in accommodation and food services, 2.2 to 4.4 percent in retail trade, 2.3 to 3.7 percent in professional and business services and 1.9 to 3.0 percent in health care and social assistance, while the federal government moved only from 0.6 to 0.7 percent. Penn and Nezamis report that 18 of 19 industries had more quits in 2021 than in 2020, the exception being state and local government education. For 2022, Penn and Huang give annual average quits rates of 5.8 percent in accommodation and food services, the highest, and 0.7 percent in the federal government, the lowest; in accommodation and food services, 83 percent of separations were quits, compared with 70 percent nationally. By region, the South had 20.2 million quits in 2021, and quits were 71.0 percent of its separations, the highest share of any region.

Was it unprecedented? Only within the JOLTS era. Gittleman estimated, by extrapolating from older manufacturing turnover data, that economywide quits rates may have been as high as 3.3 percent in 1973, while cautioning that the estimate is not directly comparable. He concluded that 2021 rates were "certainly high for the 21st century" but "not the highest historically," and that quits rose faster than labor market tightness alone would predict: models based on unemployment underpredicted 2021 quits rates by an average of 0.74 percentage points. Amanor-Boadu found that quits in January 2022 were almost 4.3 million, against about 3.9 million projected from the trend after the Great Recession.

Normalization since 2023. BLS JOLTS Table 21 (not seasonally adjusted, revised March 2026) shows annual quits of 47.6 million in 2021, 50.5 million in 2022, 44.2 million in 2023, 39.3 million in 2024 and 38.0 million in 2025. The JOLTS release for August 2026, published September 29, 2026, reports quits unchanged at 3.1 million and a rate of 1.9 percent, below the 2.3 percent typical of 2019. Industry gaps persist: JOLTS Table 4 shows preliminary August 2026 quits rates of 3.5 percent in accommodation and food services, 3.0 percent in retail trade and 0.5 percent in the federal government. For the wider picture of openings, hires and unemployment, see our labor market entry.

A second BLS measure: job leavers. The Current Population Survey counts unemployed people by reason. Its definitions describe job leavers as unemployed people who quit or otherwise voluntarily left their previous job and immediately began looking for new employment. Employment Situation Table A-11 shows 741,000 job leavers in September 2026, seasonally adjusted, or 10.5 percent of the unemployed.

Final pay: no federal deadline. The Department of Labor's last paycheck page states that employers are not required by federal law to give former employees their final paycheck immediately, and that some states may require immediate payment. If the regular payday for the last pay period has passed without payment, the employee can contact the Wage and Hour Division or the state labor department. Two example states show how much the rule varies.

Example state: California. The Labor Commissioner's paydays and final wages page explains Labor Code section 202: an employee who quits after giving at least 72 hours' notice must be paid all wages, including accrued vacation, at the time of quitting, and one who quits without that notice must be paid within 72 hours. An employee who quits without notice may ask for the final payment to be mailed, and the mailing date counts as the payment date. Under section 203, an employer that willfully fails to pay owes a waiting time penalty equal to the employee's daily rate of pay for each day the wages remain unpaid, up to 30 calendar days. Worked example: for an employee whose daily rate is $200, a willful 12-day delay means a penalty of $2,400 (12 x $200), and the maximum is $6,000 (30 x $200). See our California labor laws entry.

Example state: Texas. The Texas Workforce Commission's final pay guidance says that under section 61.014 of the Texas Payday Law, an employee who quits, retires or resigns must receive final pay on the next regularly scheduled payday after the effective date of resignation, while an employee who is laid off or discharged must be paid within six calendar days. Fringe benefits payable under a written policy, commissions and bonuses follow the same deadline unless the wage agreement or policy sets a different payout schedule. TWC adds that whether a separation is voluntary is decided under the rules used in unemployment cases. Other states differ; the Department of Labor lists state labor offices.

COBRA notices after a resignation. The EBSA publication An Employer's Guide to Group Health Continuation Coverage Under COBRA (October 2021) says COBRA generally applies to private-sector group health plans of employers with at least 20 employees on more than 50 percent of typical business days in the prior calendar year, counting part-time employees as fractions. Termination of employment for any reason other than gross misconduct is a qualifying event, so a resignation counts. The employer must notify the plan within 30 days, and the plan must send an election notice within 14 days of receiving that notice. Under 29 CFR 2590.606-4(b)(2), when the employer is also the plan administrator, the election notice is due within 44 days of the qualifying event, or of the loss of coverage if the plan starts the period then. Qualified beneficiaries get at least 60 days to elect, coverage after termination lasts up to 18 months, and the premium cannot exceed 102 percent of the plan's cost.

Worked example: a COBRA timeline. An employee resigns with a last day of March 13 and coverage ends that day. If a separate administrator runs the plan, the employer's notice to it is due by April 12 (30 days), and the administrator then has 14 days from receipt. If the employer administers the plan itself, the election notice is due by April 26 (44 days). If the full monthly cost of the coverage is $700, the most the plan may charge is $714 (102 percent of $700).

Unemployment benefits after a quit. The Department of Labor's unemployment insurance page says each state sets its own eligibility guidelines for workers who become unemployed through no fault of their own. The Employment and Training Administration's Comparison of State Unemployment Insurance Laws (2023), Chapter 5 states that voluntarily leaving work without good cause is a reason for disqualification under all states' laws, but the definition of good cause varies: many states restrict it to causes connected with the work or attributable to the employer, while others recognize good personal cause. In most states the disqualification lasts until the person is employed again and earns a specified amount; the table lists 5 times the weekly benefit amount for California and 6 weeks of work or 6 times the weekly benefit amount for Texas.

Example state: California unemployment. The EDD's Benefit Determination Guide, VQ 5 quotes Unemployment Insurance Code section 1256, which disqualifies a person who left the most recent work voluntarily without good cause. Good cause exists when the reason, whether or not work connected, is real, substantial and compelling and would cause a reasonable person genuinely wanting to keep the job to leave. Before quitting, the claimant has a duty to try to preserve the job, for example by letting the employer fix the problem or by asking for a leave of absence or transfer. Whether the claim is paid is decided by the state agency, not the employer.

Exit interviews and the reasons behind quits. JOLTS counts how many people quit, and Gittleman's article notes that why they quit, and whether they took new jobs or left the labor force, needed further research. An employer's own exit interview process is the direct way to learn reasons at one workplace. For the full departure checklist, see offboarding; for retention factors, see employee satisfaction and work-life balance.

When a resignation is not really voluntary. The EEOC's prohibited practices page says discriminatory practices under the laws it enforces include constructive discharge, or forcing an employee to resign by making the work environment so intolerable a reasonable person would not be able to stay. Its Enforcement Guidance on Retaliation and Related Issues (August 25, 2016) says protection extends to people retaliated against after employment ends, and lists an unjustified, untruthful negative job reference as an example. Charges generally must be filed within 180 calendar days, extended to 300 days where a state or local agency enforces a similar law (EEOC). See our retaliation entry.

FAQ: Is the Great Resignation over? By the JOLTS measure, quits have fallen back: the rate was 1.9 percent in August 2026 (preliminary), against 3.0 percent at the 2021-2022 peak and 2.3 percent through most of 2019. BLS does not declare an end date because it does not use the term.

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