Quits Jumped by 321,000 in September: Is the Great Stay Starting to Crack, and What Does It Mean for Retention Budgets?
For more than a year, American workers have mostly stayed put. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for September 2026, published on November 3, shows the first real movement: 3.4 million people quit, 321,000 more than in August, and the quits rate rose to 2.1%. Most of the increase came from restaurants and hotels, and economists warn that one month is not a trend. For HR teams it is still the first sign in a while that the people they assumed would stay may start shopping around.
What the BLS reported
JOLTS counts how many jobs employers have open on the last business day of the month and how many people were hired, quit, laid off or left for other reasons during it. Quits are the number HR watches most closely, because they are voluntary: a rising quits rate usually means workers think they can find something better.
In September, quits across all nonfarm employers rose to 3,365,000 from 3,044,000 in August, an increase of 321,000 (our subtraction from the BLS table). Over twelve months the increase was 375,000. The rate, which expresses quits as a share of employment, went from 1.9% to 2.1%. BLS calls that rate change “little changed” because it falls within the survey's margin of error, while the jump in the level is large enough to count as a real increase.
“The number of quits increased to 3.4 million, while the rate was little changed at 2.1 percent.”
— U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, September 2026 (November 3, 2026)
The rest of the report moved less. Openings rose to 7,523,000 from 7,190,000, with state and local government (excluding education) adding 104,000 of them. Hires edged up to 5,402,000. Layoffs and discharges stayed at 1.6 million, or 1.0% of employment. Quits made up about 63% of all 5.3 million separations (our arithmetic: 3,365,000 ÷ 5,319,000).
Where people quit
The increase was not spread evenly. Accommodation and food services alone added 197,000 quits, about three in five of the national increase (our arithmetic: 197,000 ÷ 321,000). Retail, professional and business services and health care rose more modestly. Quits fell in manufacturing and in finance and insurance.
| Industry | Sept 2025 | Aug 2026 | Sept 2026 (p) | Rate, Aug → Sept 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total nonfarm | 2,990 | 3,044 | 3,365 | 1.9% → 2.1% |
| Total private | 2,747 | 2,876 | 3,187 | 2.1% → 2.3% |
| Accommodation and food services | 488 | 522 | 719 | 3.6% → 5.0% |
| Health care and social assistance | 516 | 445 | 479 | 1.9% → 2.0% |
| Retail trade | 312 | 450 | 475 | 2.9% → 3.1% |
| Professional and business services | 528 | 432 | 463 | 1.9% → 2.1% |
| Manufacturing | 177 | 205 | 199 | 1.6% → 1.6% |
| Finance and insurance | 89 | 65 | 61 | 1.0% → 0.9% |
Retail is the line to notice for year-over-year planning: 475,000 quits in September against 312,000 a year earlier, with the rate up from 2.0% to 3.1%. Office-based sectors look different. Professional and business services and finance both have fewer quits than a year ago.
Is the Great Stay over? Four quick answers
Is this a turning point? Too early to say. Cory Stahle of Indeed Hiring Lab notes that 2.1% is the first quits-rate reading above 2% since June 2025, and writes that it “may signal a turnaround, but the signal is faint.” The rate is still below the roughly 2.3% average of 2019 shown in Indeed's chart, and well below the 2021–2022 peak near 3%.
Do economists think it is a good time to quit? Mostly not. Marketplace spoke to economists at the Century Foundation, the Economic Policy Institute and Groundwork Collaborative on release day; their view was that one month of data means little while hiring stays near 2012–2013 levels. EPI's Heidi Shierholz put it plainly: “If you have a job, the right thing to do is to hang onto it if you can.”
Why would hospitality move first? It has the highest quits rate of any major sector and the shortest switching cost: a server or front-desk worker can change employers in days. Hires in the same sector also rose by 158,000, which suggests a lot of that churn was people moving between employers rather than leaving work.
What does 0.2 points mean for my company? As a rough illustration (our arithmetic, treating the monthly rate as steady): for 200 employees, 1.9% is about 3.8 quits a month and 2.1% is about 4.2. That is roughly five extra departures a year. At the hospitality rate of 5.0%, the same 200 people would produce about 10 quits a month.
What it means for your retention and rewards plan
- Check your frontline teams first. Restaurants, hotels and retail drove the increase. If you employ hourly or deskless staff, compare your own September and October exits with the sector rates above. Our guide to frontline employee recognition covers what works for people who never sit at a desk.
- Put a number on each extra quit. Five extra departures a year is small until you price replacement. The employee turnover cost calculator estimates the cost per leaver, and the ROI calculator compares that with the cost of a recognition program.
- Recognize before the market reopens. When quits rise, the people with options leave first. Small, frequent awards that the employee chooses, such as a gift card from a catalog of brands, are cheaper than a counter-offer. See how gift card recognition affects turnover for the evidence.
- Don't over-read office data. Professional services and finance show fewer quits than a year ago. If your workforce is mostly salaried and office-based, the retention risk may not have moved yet; the employee turnover statistics for 2026 give benchmarks by industry.
Pay is the other half of the picture. Our report on the third-quarter Employment Cost Index found private-sector wages falling 0.6% after inflation, which helps explain why workers might start looking even in a slow hiring market.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary — September 2026” (November 3, 2026), the primary source. Openings, hires, separations, quits, layoffs, industry changes, the revisions to August, the next release date and the quoted sentence. bls.gov
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS Table A (openings, hires and total separations levels and rates) and Table 4 (quits levels and rates by industry), September 2026 release. Table A, Table 4
- Cory Stahle, Indeed Hiring Lab, “September 2026 JOLTS Report: Eerily Quiet” (November 3, 2026). The first-above-2%-since-June-2025 comparison, the 2019 average from its chart and the quoted sentence. hiringlab.indeed.com
- Samantha Fields, Marketplace, “Quits ticked up, but economists say it’s still a terrible time to leave your job” (November 3, 2026). Economists' reactions and the quoted sentence from Heidi Shierholz. marketplace.org
This article summarizes official U.S. labor-market statistics for general information. It is not legal, tax or compensation advice. Retention and reward decisions depend on each employer's workforce and market.
About the author
Maciej has worked in the digital gift card and rewards industry for over 5 years. For this story he read the BLS September 2026 JOLTS release with its Table A and Table 4, compared the industry quits figures with August and September 2025, and read Indeed Hiring Lab's and Marketplace's same-day analysis. He worked out the monthly changes, the industry shares and the 200-employee example.