Industries Facing the Highest Turnover Right Now

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Some industries are always prone to more turnover than others. Consider a seasonal business catering to tourists and employing minimum-wage earning high-school or college students compared to a tenured professor for a couple of extreme examples on either end of the turnover spectrum.

But within these relatively monolithic categories and notwithstanding general rules that stand the test of time fairly well, there are always variations brought about by various macroeconomic factors like, say, pandemics or spikes in inflation or global unrest.

Some Industries Faring Better Than Others

New research helps shine light on which industries are being hardest hit in today’s economic environment. The new study from document management tool SmallPDF analyzed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to score every industry’s quit rates—the percentage of total employees quitting in an industry every month—and quit levels, which measures how many employees quit in total each month.

Hospitality Industries Hit Hardest

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the accommodation and food services industry—including fast food workers, waiters, and chefs—was the hardest hit. This industry saw an average of 5.8% of its workforce leave between April and August 2022, when the study was carried out. More than 773,600 employees left every month on average during the study. August 2022 saw 128,000 more employees quit than the number who left their jobs in August 2021, indicating a massive change in staffing.

Retail Comes In Second

Second place is probably also not much of a surprise: the retail industry. This industry includes jobs like cashiers, customer service representatives, and stock clerks. It saw an average of 600,400 employees quitting every month between April and August 2022 and an average quit rate of 3.82%. Roughly 109,000 fewer employees quit this August compared to August 2021 in the industry.

The arts, entertainment, and recreation industry  and the professional and business services industry rounded out the top four.

The industries facing the highest levels of turnover right now probably aren’t surprising, but the levels of turnover are significant even for these sectors that traditionally face high attrition.

Lin Grensing-Pohal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.

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