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    'I Quit My Job' Is a Signal of Economic Recovery

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    With new opportunities and a different perspective as the pandemic eases, workers are choosing to leave their jobs in record numbers.At some point early this year, Justin Hoffman concluded that he was being underpaid.The marketing director at an orthopedic practice in Findlay, Ohio, Mr. Hoffman was making $42,000 a year — about $13,000 less, by his count, than people were making in similar jobs elsewhere.But when he asked for a raise in March, he was given only a small bump in pay. “That was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.So after some careful thinking, Mr. Hoffman, 28, did what he had long ached to do: He quit. His last day was June 4.Mr. Hoffman is among millions of workers who have voluntarily left their jobs recently, one of the most striking elements of the newly blazing-hot job market. According to the Labor Department, nearly four million people quit their jobs in April, the most on record, pushing the rate to 2.7 percent of those employed.The rate was particularly high in the leisure and hospitality industry, where competition for workers has been especially fierce. But the number of those quitting registered across the board.Economists believe that one reason more workers are quitting is simply a backlog: By some estimates, more than five million fewer people quit last year than would otherwise be expected, as some workers, riding out the labor market’s convulsions, stuck with jobs they may have wanted to leave anyway. (And the millions of involuntary job losses during the pandemic surely accounted for some of the reduction in quitting.) Now that the economy is regaining its footing, workers may suddenly be feeling more emboldened to heed their impulses.But another factor may be the speed with which the economy has reawakened. As the pandemic has receded and the great reopening has swept across the country, businesses that had gone into hibernation or curtailed their work force during the pandemic have raced to hire employees to meet the surging demand.At the same time, many people remain reluctant to return to work because of lingering fears of the virus, child care or elder care challenges, still-generous unemployment benefits, low wages or other reasons.The result has been an explosion of job openings, despite a relatively high unemployment rate, as businesses struggle to recruit and retain employees — a dynamic that has placed power more firmly in workers’ hands. With employers offering higher wages to attract candidates, many workers — especially in low-wage positions in restaurants and hotels — are leaving their jobs and jumping to ones that pay even slightly more.“There’s a lot of churn in low-wage jobs where people don’t really have a career progression,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter. “If you find a job that offers just marginally more, there’s no cost to you in switching.”More than 740,000 workers quit jobs in leisure and hospitality in April, the Labor Department said, for a rate of 5.3 percent. A vast majority were in accommodation and food service.The pandemic has driven workers to quit for other reasons as well. With fewer opportunities for spending, some people were able to save money and pay down their debts, giving them a cushion to leave jobs with which they were dissatisfied. Other workers, disinclined to give up remote work, are abandoning jobs that are no longer affording them as much flexibility.For Mr. Hoffman, the decision to leave his job was the culmination of months of perceived injustices, which he said he was able to evaluate more clearly because of the pandemic.As coronavirus cases swelled in the fall, he asked to work from home because of the risk he feared he posed to his sister, whose immune system is compromised. His request was denied, he said, crystallizing his sense that he was not respected or valued.Over the last year, with the pandemic limiting his social interactions, he began to network over Twitter with other people in marketing. That was how he determined that he was being significantly underpaid.Mr. Hoffman, who is now looking for work, said he probably would have quit eventually. But the pandemic, he said, hastened his decision.“I think that if the pandemic hadn’t happened, then things wouldn’t have turned out this way,” he said. “It didn’t just change my perspective on my compensation, but I think it’s changed a lot about my understanding of the relationship between employers and employees.”A restaurant in Louisville, Ky., advertised it was hiring. More than 740,000 workers quit jobs in leisure and hospitality in April, the Labor Department said.Amira Karaoud/ReutersOn a more philosophical level, the constant threat of illness, more time with family members, leisure time that gave way to new passions — all may have prompted some workers to reassess how they want to spend their time. Burned out, some people have left their jobs for once-in-a-lifetime experiences, like traveling the world. Others have seen an opportunity to shift careers or branch out on their own.Start-ups surged during the pandemic, particularly in Black communities, as stimulus checks and unemployment benefits helped seed entrepreneurs’ dreams and bolster their confidence.“The pandemic, for a lot of people, was really stressful and caused a lot of uncertainty, so I think what a lot of people did was reflect on their lives,” said Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University who studies employee resignations.Dr. Klotz said people were accustomed to work being at the center of their lives and identities — a reality that may have shifted during the pandemic.“In general, we want a life of contentment and a life that has purpose,” he said. “And I think for many people, they’ve discovered that contentment and purpose for them may lie outside of work.”That was the case for Matt Gisin, 24, who gave notice at his job as a graphic designer at a health and wellness company this month. During the pandemic, he was able to work remotely, and without a commute, he had more time for hobbies like CrossFit and video game streaming.“I got very adjusted to all of this time and all of this freedom,” he said.But slowly, his company began requiring employees to come back into the office, first for two days a week, then three, then four. With so many people commuting to work in their cars, his trip from his home in Mamaroneck, N.Y., to the middle of Long Island could stretch to two hours each way, leaving him little time for his pastimes.“I wasn’t happy anymore,” he said. “I was finding happiness in a lot of outside activities so I took this kind of leap to leave.” He now hopes to find a job in the video game industry.Economists expect the elevated level of quitting to continue for some time, as the pandemic eases and the economy rebalances.“I would be surprised if this ended before the summer ended,” said Andrew Chamberlain, the chief economist for the hiring site Glassdoor. But he also said there was an “expiration date”: A high number of workers quitting will contribute to a labor shortage, eventually forcing employers to raise wages and provide other incentives, which will help lure workers back and re-establish economic equilibrium.In the meantime, he said, workers — especially those with low wages — will continue to gain leverage over employers.“The longer these shortages persist, the more bargaining power you put into the hands of very low-skilled workers,” he said. “There is some evidence that employers are moving in response, and that’s unusual.” More

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    State unemployment claims increased last week.

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    Initial claims for state jobless benefits rose last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.The weekly figure was about 402,000, up 37,000 from the previous week. New claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federally funded program for jobless freelancers, gig workers and others who do not ordinarily qualify for state benefits, totaled 118,000, up 47,000 from the prior week. The figures are not seasonally adjusted. (On a seasonally adjusted basis, state claims totaled 412,000, an increase of 37,000.)In four states — Alaska, Iowa, Mississippi and Missouri — it was the final week in which some or all federal pandemic unemployment benefits were paid, including a $300 supplement to other benefits. A total of 25 Republican-led states have announced plans to discontinue federal benefits this month or next, even though they are funded through September.New state claims remain high by historical standards but are one-half the level recorded in early February. The benefit filings, something of a proxy for layoffs, have receded as businesses return to fuller operations, particularly in hard-hit industries like leisure and hospitality. More

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    State Unemployment Claims Fall Below 400,000

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    Initial claims for state jobless benefits declined last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.The weekly figure was about 367,000, a decrease of 58,000 from the previous week. New claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federally funded program for jobless freelancers, gig workers and others who do not ordinarily qualify for state benefits, totaled 71,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the prior week. The figures are not seasonally adjusted. (On a seasonally adjusted basis, state claims totaled 376,000, a decline of 9,000.)It was the first time the weekly figure for initial state claims had fallen below 400,000 since the outset of the pandemic.New state claims remain high by historical standards but are one-third the level recorded in early January. The benefit filings, something of a proxy for layoffs, have receded as businesses return to fuller operations, particularly in hard-hit industries like leisure and hospitality. More

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    U.S. asks Mexico to review a second complaint about labor violations in its auto industry.

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    The Biden administration is invoking provisions in a new trade agreement to ask Mexico to look into accusations of labor violations at an auto-parts plant near the U.S. border.The action, announced Wednesday by the Labor Department and the Office of the United States Trade Representative, follows a complaint by groups including the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s largest federation of unions, that workers were being denied the rights of free association and collective bargaining.The A.F.L.-C.I.O. said workers at the Tridonex plant in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, had been harassed and fired over their efforts to organize with an independent union in place of one controlled by the company. Tridonex is owned by Cardone Industries, an aftermarket auto-parts manufacturer based in Philadelphia.It is the second time that the United States has sought Mexican review of a labor rights matter under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which took effect last summer. The accord has a “rapid response” mechanism that provides for complaints to be brought against and for penalties to be applied to an individual factory.“This announcement demonstrates our commitment to using the tools in the agreement to stand up for workers at home and abroad,” Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, said in a statement, noting that Mexico has 10 days to agree to conduct a review and, if it agrees, 45 days to remedy the situation.Last month the United States asked Mexico to review whether labor violations had occurred at a General Motors plant in the central state of Guanajuato in connection with a recent vote on a collective bargaining agreement. Mexico agreed to the request the same day. More

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    Unemployment claims fell last week.

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    New claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, the government reported on Thursday, as the labor market slowly recovers from the staggering losses wreaked by the coronavirus pandemic.About 487,000 workers filed first-time claims for state benefits during the week that ended May 8, the Labor Department said, a decrease from 514,000 the week before. In addition, about 104,000 new claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program covering freelancers, part-timers and others who do not routinely qualify for state benefits.Neither figure is seasonally adjusted. On a seasonally adjusted basis, new state claims totaled 473,000.After more than a year of being whipsawed by the pandemic, the economy has been showing new life. Restrictions are lifting, businesses are reopening and job listings are on the upswing. But hiring in April was weaker than expected.Some employers, particularly in the restaurant and hospitality sectors, have complained of having trouble finding workers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several Republican governors have asserted that a temporary $300-a-week federal unemployment supplement has made workers reluctant to return to the job.The U.S. Labor Department said that as of Wednesday, six states — Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and South Carolina — had notified the department that they were terminating federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits next month.The unemployment rates in those states in March, the latest month for which data is available, ranged from 3.7 percent in Iowa to 6.3 percent in Mississippi.Several other states with Republican governors, including Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Wyoming and Idaho, have said they also plan to withdraw from the federal program. Tennessee and Alabama are among the states that offer the lowest maximum benefit to qualified individuals each week.But economists are skeptical that jobless benefits are playing anything more than a bit part in the pace of the job market’s recovery.“There is tremendous churn in this labor market,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “There are still major supply constraints and unemployment benefits are not the most important one. The virus is.”Many workers have children at home who are not attending school in person. Others are wary of returning to jobs that require face-to-face encounters. Covid-19 infections have decreased since September but there are still 38,000 new cases being reported each day and 600 Covid-related deaths. Less than half the population is fully vaccinated.There is halting progress from employers as well, as businesses continually update their assessment of costs and customer demand. “The hiring pattern isn’t going to be smooth,” Mr. Daco said. “Businesses hire and then reassess. They need to find the right balance, it’s a trial and error process more than anything.”Federal jobless benefits are due to expire in September. Prematurely halting them is “detrimental to the economy,” Mr. Daco said. “You’re voluntarily hurting certain vulnerable tranches of the population.”Nationwide, the unemployment rate was 6.1 percent, and there are 8.2 million fewer jobs than in February 2020. More

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    Biden Defends Unemployment Benefits, Provided Workers Accept Job Offers

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    The president’s comments and a raft of policy announcements were a pushback to Republican criticism of his economic plan after a disappointing jobs report on Friday.WASHINGTON — President Biden ordered the Labor Department on Monday to ensure that unemployed Americans cannot draw enhanced federal jobless benefits if they turn down a suitable job offer, even as he rejected claims by Republicans that his weekly unemployment bonus is undermining efforts to get millions of Americans back to work.Stung from a weekend of criticism over a disappointing April jobs report, Mr. Biden struck a defiant tone, seeking to make clear that he expects workers to return to jobs if they are available, while defending his signature economic policy effort thus far and blaming corporate America, in part, for not doing more to entice people to go back to work.The president told reporters at the White House that child care constraints, school closures and fears of contracting the coronavirus had hindered job creation last month, and he challenged companies to help workers gain access to vaccines and to raise their pay.“The last Congress, before I became president, gave businesses over $1.4 trillion in Covid relief,” Mr. Biden said. “Congress may have approved that money, but let’s be clear: The money came from the American people, and it went from the American people to American businesses, many of them big businesses, to help them get through this pandemic and keep their doors open.”He added, “My expectation is that, as our economy comes back, these companies will provide fair wages and safe work environments.” He said that if they did, “they’ll find plenty of workers, and we’re all going to come out of this together better than before.”Mr. Biden also promised more relief was working its way into the economy through measures created by the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” that the president signed into law in March. That includes help for child care providers and aid for state and local governments that Treasury Department officials began to make available on Monday.His defense of the stimulus funds and his administration’s handling of the economy comes as Mr. Biden is trying to win support for even more federal spending, including a $2.3 trillion jobs proposal centered on physical infrastructure.Republicans have already criticized Mr. Biden for the disappointing jobs numbers and have suggested he is wreaking havoc with the economic recovery. In particular, they blamed a provision in his rescue plan that extended a $300-per-week federal supplement for unemployed Americans. They say those benefits are depressing hiring by discouraging Americans from returning to work.An aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, emailed reporters on Monday, accusing Mr. Biden of placing “handcuffs” on the recovery by extending the jobless benefits.Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said on Monday that Mr. Biden was “all over the place” on the issue.“He wants to go after folks who are gaming the system, but he’s denying the reality that his policies are making the situation worse, so he’s trying to make struggling businesses the boogeymen,” Mr. Sasse said in a news release. “Here’s the deal: Bad federal policy is making unemployment pay more than work, and millions of jobs aren’t getting filled.”Mr. Biden said on Monday that his administration would make clear that any worker who turned down a suitable job offer, with rare exceptions for health fears related to the virus, would lose access to unemployment benefits.To ensure those rules are being followed, the Labor Department will work with states to reinstate work search requirements. Those rules, which require that anyone collecting unemployment benefits provide proof that they are actively searching for work, were suspended during the pandemic.Twenty-nine states have already reinstated them, and the Labor Department will “work with the remaining states, as health and safety conditions allow, to put in place appropriate work search requirements as the economy continues to rebound, vaccinations increase, and the pandemic is brought under control,” White House officials said in a fact sheet.The president also pointed to new guidance issued Monday by the Treasury Department that will help state, local and tribal governments gain access to more than $350 billion in relief funds made available by the American Rescue Plan. He said that money would help speed hiring and economic growth.“With this funding, communities hit hard by Covid-19 will able to return to a semblance of normalcy,” the Treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen, said in a statement on Monday on the relief funds.Erin Scott for The New York TimesThe details of how the Treasury Department will disburse those funds, which can be spent on pandemic-related costs, have been eagerly awaited by states, cities, territories and tribal governments that are expected to receive money. But several Republican-led states and the Biden administration are in a legal confrontation over whether states can cut taxes after taking relief money and using it to solidify their budgets.A fact sheet accompanying the announcement about the distribution on Monday made clear that the relief money could not be used to subsidize tax cuts directly or indirectly, which could discourage some states from accepting funds.“The American Rescue Plan ensures that funds needed to provide vital services and support public employees, small businesses and families struggling to make it through the pandemic are not used to fund reductions in net tax revenue,” the Treasury Department said. “If the funds provided have been used to offset tax cuts, the amount used for this purpose must be paid back to the Treasury.”The Treasury Department also issued detailed guidance to states explaining how it would determine if the money was being used properly and in which cases the relief funds could be recouped. If a state does cut taxes, it will have to demonstrate to the Treasury Department that it offset that lost revenue with spending cuts or another source of revenue that does not include the fiscal recovery funds. If the state cannot do that, the department can claw back that amount of money.“This process ensures fiscal recovery funds are used in a manner consistent with the statute’s defined eligible uses and the offset provision’s limitation on these eligible uses, while avoiding undue interference with state and territory decisions regarding tax and spending policies,” the guidance said.Treasury and White House officials made clear that they would scrutinize how the funds were being used to ensure that state budgets were not being gamed to violate the intent of the law. A new recovery office at the Treasury Department will coordinate with states to help determine if their policies are in line with conditions set forth in the law.The relief money also cannot be paid into state pension funds to reduce unfunded liabilities.A White House official would not comment on whether initiatives like Montana’s return-to-work bonuses could be funded using relief money. States and cities are being given broad discretion on how they can use the money, which is intended to replace public sector revenue that was lost during the pandemic; to provide extra pay for essential workers; and to be invested in sewer, water and broadband infrastructure.The Treasury Department’s directive is unlikely to put the legal fight over whether states can cut taxes to rest. Mark Brnovich, the attorney general of Arizona, which is suing the Biden administration, said that Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen’s guidance failed to clarify the matter.“Arizona should not be put in a position of losing billions of dollars because the federal government wants to commandeer states’ tax policies,” Mr. Brnovich said.The allocation of the funds is also likely to be a contentious matter as the money starts to flow. Some states have complained that states that managed the pandemic well are essentially being penalized because the formula for awarding aid is based on state unemployment rates.The Treasury Department said on Monday that the states that were hardest hit economically by the pandemic would also get their money faster.Local governments will generally receive half of the money this month and the rest next year. But states that currently have a net increase in unemployment of more than two percentage points since February 2020 will get the funds in a lump sum right away.Officials also said Monday that the administration would issue new guidelines meant to speed money from the recovery act to help child care centers reopen, and that the Labor Department would highlight a program that allows some unemployed workers to accept offers of part-time jobs without losing access to the federally supplemented benefits.Mr. Biden said that the efforts would help the economy recover — and that the rebound from recession remained on track.“Let’s be clear: Our economic plan is working,” he said. But he said recovery would not always prove to be easy or even. “Some months will exceed expectations,” he said, “others will fall short.” More