Often when things happen in the United States, people can assume that the same things are happening elsewhere. One of the latest topics to take on this mantle is the \u2018great resignation\u2019 \u2013 the idea that the Covid-19 pandemic has prompted a huge wave of life stocktaking, leading to a large rise in the number of people quitting their jobs, either to move to a new job or a new life outside work.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is certainly true that\u00a0job quits<\/a>\u00a0in the US labour market at the end of last year were at a very high level \u2013 3% of the employed quit their jobs in November 2021, compared with an average of 2% a month before the pandemic. This is over and above what might be expected if this were simply a rebound from the enforced immobility during the pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, are we seeing the same thing here in the UK?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well not yet. If the same phenomenon were happening in the UK, we would expect to see at least one of the following things: more people leaving their jobs voluntarily (\u2018job quits\u2019); more people in work looking for a new job; more people moving from one job to another; or more people being hired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The figures below track the weekly level of each of these outcomes over the course of the pandemic up until the first week of December, using data from the\u00a0Labour Force Survey (LFS)<\/a>. This is the same household sample survey used to produce the official UK unemployment count each month.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Figure 1 also plots the weekly average quit rate over the five years preceding the pandemic (shown by the dotted line). It shows that quit rates toward the end of 2021 were no higher, and if anything, somewhat below, the average before-pandemic quit rates seen at the same point in the year. (The dark shading indicates any statistically significant departure from the norm \u2013 any dark shading in Figure 1 indicates significantly lower quits than the norm throughout the pandemic.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quit rates were rising in the autumn of 2021, but they always rise in the autumn of any year. There is no indication that they have surpassed previous norms or made up for a stalling of quit rates during the course of the pandemic, let alone reached dizzying new heights.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFigure 1: Weekly quit rates in 2021 relative to weekly norms<\/h4>\n\n\n