More workers are looking for the exit, the government reports.

 

The Great Worker Exodus of 2010 may finally have arrived. Several economists last year had projected a huge uptick in workers walking away from their jobs, but when January 1 rolled around and the economy was still mired in layoffs and unemployment, their prognosis seemed a lot less likely.

That appears to be changing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of Americans quitting their jobs in February surpassed the number being laid off or fired—the first time that’s happened since October of 2008. For the 15 months since, the average number of workers quitting their jobs has been hovering around 1.75 million, way down from the 2.7 million average since the BLS started tracking the data 10 years ago. Clearly, the largest and longest recession since the Great Depression created a widespread feeling that anyone was lucky to any job, making workers a lot less likely to risk leaving a regular paycheck. Also, there weren’t nearly as many jobs to go to, and there was fierce competition for a lot of jobs that might have previously been easy to transition into.

However, job dissatisfaction, employee ambition and other factors that prompt workers to leave their job didn’t go away. That’s why surveys conducted in the last quarter of 2009 found that as many as 60 percent of workers said they planned to seek another job when the economy improved.

That job exodus appears to have begun, with the BLS reporting that about 1.87 million people quit their job in March. That’s 100,000 more people quitting than were laid off in the same time period. The shift will likely only get bigger, and it has companies specializing in recruitment and outplacement services ramping up for a big need in the market, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Adecco Group, a world-wide staffing firm based in Zurich, has seen several of its clients ask for candidates for key positions after employees made surprise departures, says Vice President Rich Thompson. Although so far there haven't been widespread departures, Mr. Thompson says his company is readying itself for large-scale changes within the next few months. "We're preparing for a massive reshuffling of talent at all job levels in all industries," he says, noting that the recession earlier this decade was so short and shallow that the turnover this time around is likely to be much greater.

While a shift like this can be scary for companies looking to retain talent, overall economists see this kind of “workforce mobility” as a positive sign for the economy. Time Magazine added it to its list of reasons the economy “isn’t a total basket case” and the Motley Fool made it one of three signs the job market is back.

However, the timing could be more a matter of perception than real change in the economy. Indeed, stockbloghub.com points out that while fewer jobs are being lost, there is still a dearth of new jobs being created:

The problem has been, at least since the middle of 2009, not with too many people being fired, but with not enough new jobs being created ... In February and March, the rate of new hires did pick up a little bit, but it remains at a very low level. In March this year, there were a total of 4.242 million people who got new jobs, up from just 3.670 million who found new jobs in March of 2009. The total number of people who lost their jobs fell to 3.698 million this year versus a total of 4.444 million who lost their jobs in March of 2009….The number of job openings has started to increase (the job openings numbers are a snapshot of the last day of the month, while the hires and fires are the totals for the month), but they still remain far below the worst points of the 2001 recession and the jobless recovery that followed it.