We know (because we've been told by the White House) that 2021 saw "the strongest first-year economic track record of any president in the last 50 years." That's great news!
Meanwhile, in November, people left their jobs at a rate that the world's best economic textbooks describe as "eye-poppingly, mind-blowingly, face-meltingly high":
A record 4.5 million Americans voluntarily left their jobs in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This pushed the quits rate to 3%, matching the high from September...
"Workers continued to quit their jobs at a historic rate. The low-wage sectors directly impacted by the pandemic continued to be the source of much of the elevated quitting," said Nick Bunker, director of research at the Indeed Hiring Lab, in emailed comments.
The big question for 2022 is whether this dynamic will persist.
Oh, is that the "big question for 2022?"
Yeah it doesn't seem that very big to me.
In fact it seems pretty easily answerable. This is, after all, Joe Biden's economy.
But wait: The quitting wasn't evenly distributed across the entire economy. There were some industries where it was higher than others:
Workers were most likely to quit their jobs in the hospitality industry, which had by far the highest quits rate at 6.1% in November, as well as those in health care.
Wait wait wait...
You're telling me that, in the midst of a pandemic, when we need every healthcare worker we can possibly get our hands on, the people most likely to quit were... healthcare workers??
I wonder if there were any reasons for that. Say, hypothetically, that the president had tried to use his executive power to ram down unconstitutional medical mandates that would force people to choose between an experimental vaccine and their jobs.
Say that said mandates gave the pointy-haired HR departments in hospitals the confidence to actually enforce said mandates, causing a significant number of their staff to up and leave for Florida and Texas.
In this totally hypothetical scenario, even if you added 6.7 million jobs in November, there would likely be big problems as record numbers of employees leave and a record number of job openings sit unfilled.
Biden, you crazy old renegade, you've really done it this time!
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