Understanding the 'quitting trend'

According to www.businessinsider.com, citing data culled from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, America's gainfully employed are leaving work "en masse" even as job openings reached a record high.

In July, the most recent month investigated, 3.98 million quit their jobs, an increase from 3.87 million who did the same in June.

April's total of 3.99 million departures was the highest level since the bureau began tracking the data in 2000.

"It's a quitting trend unlike anything seen in the past two decades," the website said. "And it could signal 2021 will be filled with employers scrambling to hire people who are rethinking what they want out of work and acting on it."

Brooks Holtom, a professor of management and senior associate dean at Georgetown University, told www.fortune.com "turnover shock" is occurring -- a life event precipitating self-reflection about job satisfaction.

"Most people don't evaluate their job satisfaction every one of 365 days in a year. Those shocks usually happen idiosyncratically for people but with the pandemic, it's happened en masse," he said.

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