US workers quitting at historic levels as job openings top 10 million for 13 consecutive months
As many businesses still struggle to fill job openings despite millions of available positions nationwide, more experts are adding to the argument that the Great Resignation isn’t over quite yet.
“We’re seeing historically high openings across the spectrum, certainly in things like leisure and hospitality and some low-wage service workers, but also in manufacturing, we have really high levels of job openings compared to the available unemployed workers out there,” Cato Institute director of general economics Scott Lincicome told Fox News senior national correspondent Rich Edson.
“So this is really a system-wide issue,” he continued, “and one that there’s not really any easy, quick fix.”
The headline number of 223,000 jobs added in December comes from the Labor Department’s establishment survey, while the headline unemployment rate of 3.5 percent comes from the household survey. Both have their own measure of employment, but they tend to move roughly in sync with one another over time.
In 2021, however, they diverged sharply. Since March, that divergence has been 2 million jobs.
The recent November jobs report indicated there were 10.4 million jobs available, but just 6 million people looking for a job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell claimed in December that there was a structural labor shortage taking place with more than 4 million fewer workers available for current demand.

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