JOLTS Quits Rate

The BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey reports that 1.9% of U.S. workers voluntarily quit their jobs in the most recent month. That matches the early-2015 lows, excluding the brief 2020 COVID trough, when the rate fell to 1.5%. At the 2022 peak, 3.0% of workers were quitting monthly — the so-called Great Resignation. The quits rate has since been cut by more than a third.

Quitting is discretionary. Workers quit when they are confident they can land something better. They stop quitting when they aren't. That makes the quits rate one of the cleanest real-time reads of labor-market tightness from the worker's side — and a leading indicator of wage pressure. The 2021-2022 wage surge was driven by workers switching jobs. The 2025-2026 wage slowdown, captured in the Atlanta Fed Wage Growth Tracker, is its reverse.

The 1.9% reading lines up with the demand-side signal in Indeed Job Postings Index, which has flatlined at pre-pandemic levels. Workers can feel what the hiring data shows. Fewer openings means fewer outside offers. Fewer outside offers means fewer raises from a move. A stalled hiring market and a collapsing quits rate are the same story told twice.

The household consequence runs through the wage channel. When quits freeze, employer pricing power over wages returns. Real wages for the bottom quartile have fallen from 7.4% growth in 2022 to 3.5% now, barely above inflation. That slowdown feeds directly into The Buffer and then into Falling Behind, where delinquency has already turned up.