The 'Great Resignation' is over. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, the US national quit rate fell to 2.0% in March 2026 — a 33% drop from the April 2022 peak of 3.0%, and the lowest sustained level since the post-2008 recovery years. Roughly 1 in 50 American workers now quits their job in any given month, compared to 1 in 33 four years ago.
The decline is sharpest in the high-cost coastal economies that powered the original Great Resignation. Quit rates in California (1.5%), New York (1.5%) and Massachusetts (1.4%) are down 28-42% from their 2022 peaks. The District of Columbia is tied for lowest at 1.4%. Twelve of the 51 state-level units now report quit rates at or below 2.0% — a level last seen in the cautious labor market of the early 2010s. The outlier is South Dakota, where quitting has gone in the opposite direction: up 22.6% from the 2022 peak, making it the only state where workers are quitting at higher rates than during the resignation wave.
National quit rate has collapsed since the 2022 peak
Seasonally-adjusted monthly quits rate, % of total employment. Source: BLS JOLTS series JTS000000000000000QUR.
Key numbers
US national quit rate, March 2026 (preliminary)
2.0%
Roughly 1 in 50 US workers quit their job in March 2026
US national quit rate, peak (April 2022)
3.0%
The Great Resignation peak — 1 in 33 workers
Change from peak to most recent
−33%
From 3.0% to 2.0% over 47 months
Lowest state quit rates (tied, December 2025)
1.4%
Massachusetts and the District of Columbia
California quit rate vs April 2022
−42.3%
From 2.6% to 1.5% — the largest decline of any of the 10 largest state economies
Georgia: largest decline of any state
−53.8%
From 3.9% to 1.8%
Number of states/DC with quit rate at or below 2.0%
12of 51
A level last seen broadly in the early 2010s
South Dakota: the only state where quitting increased
+22.6%
From 3.1% in April 2022 to 3.8% in December 2025 — the only state running against the national trend
Top 10 'job hugging' states (lowest quit rates)
DC, MA, CA, NJ, NY, PA, CT, WA, GA, NV
Nine of the 10 are coastal economic centers; Nevada is the only inland outlier
Top 10 job-hugging states: where workers quit least
Quit rate, December 2025. Coastal economic centers dominate the bottom. Source: BLS JOLTS state series.
What this means
For workers: the leverage that drove pay raises and remote work demands in 2022 has substantially evaporated. The data shows people staying put, accepting the role they have rather than testing the market — a behavior trade outlets have started calling 'job hugging'.
For employers: voluntary turnover is no longer the headline talent-strategy problem. The flip side is that the workers who remain are often disengaged. Engagement surveys and resume-builder traffic data both show high search activity even as actual departures have collapsed — workers are looking, but not leaving.
For policymakers and journalists: the dominant post-pandemic narrative — that workers gained durable power — needs an update. By the BLS's own measure, the labor market has tightened back toward employer-favoring conditions in two thirds of US states, and the states that drove the original 'resignation' story are now the strictest about staying.
“The 'Great Resignation' is still the dominant story everyone tells about the post-pandemic labor market. The BLS data tells a different one: in the states that drove that story — California, New York, Massachusetts — workers are now quitting at the lowest rates in over a decade. Whatever workers are doing now, it isn't job-hopping.”
Methodology
Careeronaut pulled the seasonally-adjusted monthly quit rate (BLS series JTS{state}0000000QUR) for all 50 US states plus the District of Columbia plus the national figure, covering January 2022 through the latest available release. National data is current through March 2026 (preliminary). State-level data is current through December 2025 (the most recent state release at the time of writing).
The 'quit rate' is defined by BLS as voluntary separations (excluding retirements) as a percent of total employment in that month. A higher rate means workers are quitting more; a lower rate means they're staying put. We sorted states ascending on the most recent quit rate (lowest = 'most job-hugging') and computed each state's change versus its April 2022 figure to anchor the trend to the Great Resignation peak.
Series IDs and the underlying methodology are publicly documented at https://www.bls.gov/jlt/. All numbers in this study are pulled live from the BLS Public Data API and are reproducible by anyone with the series IDs.
Caveats: (1) State-level JOLTS estimates have higher sampling variability than the national figure — month-to-month state swings can be noisy and the BLS itself recommends focusing on multi-month trends rather than single observations. (2) The quit rate is one indicator of labor market tightness; it should be read alongside the hires rate and the job openings rate, which we have not analyzed here. (3) State data lags the national release by one to two months, so the 'most recent' figures by state are December 2025 even though March 2026 national data is available. (4) Seasonal adjustment removes typical seasonal patterns but does not remove structural shifts; year-over-year comparisons in the same month avoid this issue.
For journalists
The Careeronaut team is happy to share the full methodology, raw data, or run a custom slice of the data for your story.
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