More People Quitting Their Jobs

SAINT PAUL, Minn. - In a nation that is still in the throws of a deep recession, the federal government reports a curious trend. More people are quitting their jobs.

The latest job numbers released by the federal government show that during the past three months more workers quit than were laid off. It’s a reversal of the 15 month trend where layoffs far exceeded voluntary job departures.

Many economists suggest the trend is a sign of confidence among the employed that economy is turning around.

Minnesota does not collect similar job data, but one of the state’s job experts says he would expect some of the same trends to be happening here. Kyle Uphoff, Assistant Director of Labor Market Information at DEED says Minnesota in many ways is out-competing the nation. The Minnesota unemployment rate he notes is 2.7 percentage points lower national average. Additionally the state’s economy grew .4 percent in April compared to the national average of .2 percent.

Uphoff says this should be encouraging news to workers. “Because for the last two years they’ve been in this situation, they’ve seen their friends, they’ve seen their coworkers, their relatives lose their jobs and now maybe they’re at a point where some of their confidence is starting to return,” said Uphoff.

Job Coach Joanne Meehl is seeing it too. Meehl advises people on making career choices and conducting job searches through her website at www.thejobsearchqueen.com . Meehl says she’s seeing a stronger sense of hope among her many clients.

“It’s been real steady all year because people are sensing this person land and that person land, so they go to networking groups and people are announcing, ‘I landed a position!’ And they say ‘Yeah!’ because they feel that they can now do it too.”

But Meehl says there’s also another layer to the trend. She senses that many workers are simple fed up doing the jobs of three and four other people who were laid off. They’re exasperated and desperate to quit. Kyle Uphoff at the Department of Employment and Economic Development agrees. “Of course this is very bad for employers,” said Uphoff. “They’ve seen this labor force that has helped through the recession start to think about other opportunities.”

Still Meehl cautions workers about quitting without a plan. “The smart person who’s preparing for the next step in their career whether they’re burned out or not, if they’re ready to make a change is preparing for it, and not just cold quitting.”

The job numbers in Minnesota suggest that’s solid advice. Since the recession began, Minnesota employers have shed 132,000 jobs. So far the economy has recovered only 25,000 jobs. As of the end of December, there were eight unemployed workers for every job opening. The latest ratios will come out at the end of the second quarter.

“I think that people who have been working throughout this recession have very little sense of the reality of being without a job along with hundreds and thousands of other people,” said Meehl. She strongly advises people to have their networking in place and have another job or plan to jump to before quitting a current job.

“My watchword is to prepare. Prepare your network. Prepare your marketing tools and make sure that you’re ready when you’re ready to leave.”