It's been called the "Great Resignation" and surely you've read the news or heard reports of people quitting left and right, all over the country. Lots of people. In November 2021 the "quit rate" for nonfarm workers in the US reached its highest level in over a decade, according to this easy-to-read graph from the Federal Reserve Bank.

Credit: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Credit: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
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But what about us hard-working Montanans? We aren't quitters, are we?

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Montana has the 5th highest resignation rate in the country.

Okay, so maybe we are quitters. Wallethub.com has released its 2022’s States With the Highest Job Resignation Rates and we're near the top. In the latest month, our quit rate hit a high of 3.90%. The average for the last 12 months is 3.25%.  Only Alaska, Wyoming, Georgia, and Kentucky had more residents quitting their jobs.

Washington, Pennsylvania, DC, and New York are states with the lowest quit rates, at just 2.0%.

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Why are so many Montanans quitting?

That's the big question that many economists are trying to wrap their heads around. Scott Behson, Ph.D., Professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University has this theory,

A lot is going on. Many who were close to or at retirement age may have simply retired. The stock market and 401ks are way up, and it incented a lot to simply remain out of the workplace. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as this dynamic creates more mid-and entry-level openings.

He adds that COVID and immigration policies are having an impact along with this interesting tidbit (emphasis mine),

But a lot of what I am seeing is that so many employees are considering how they were treated by employers during the past few years and deciding to seek out more supportive workplaces.”

Translated: Lots of people are quitting their current job because they feel like they've been treated like crap. Makes sense to me. Have you resigned in the past year, or are you planning to? Leave a Comment or reach out to me privately at michael.foth@townsquaremedia.com.

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

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