Market Data

Factory Quits at 1.40%: How Far Today's Workforce Sits From the Great Resignation

The share of manufacturing workers walking out the door sits far from its 2021-22 frenzy. We line up today's 1.40% against the pandemic-era peak to show how much bargaining power has shifted back to employers.

At 1.40%, the manufacturing quits rate is roughly 33% below its Great Resignation peak near 2.1% in late 2021, signaling that factory workers now change jobs far less readily than they did during the pandemic-era churn. The latest BLS JOLTS reading, current through May 2026 and up about 16.7% from a year ago, quantifies how much the balance of bargaining power has moved since the years when plants counteroffered by reflex.

Then: the churn economy

In late 2021 and through 2022, manufacturing lived through the fastest voluntary turnover in the modern record. Reopening demand collided with a shrunken labor pool; signing bonuses appeared for entry-level line work; and workers learned that the fastest raise was a resignation letter. At the era's peak near 2.1%, a typical plant was losing roughly 21 of every 1,000 workers to quits every month, an annualized voluntary-turnover pace above 25% for the sector, before layoffs and retirements. Wage schedules, shift differentials, and retention bonuses were all repriced under that duress, and much of today's factory pay structure still carries the mark.

Manufacturing quits rate, May 2026: 1.40%. The archived series has run between 1.20% (May 2025) and 1.50% (Nov 2025); today's reading sits 67% of the way up that band.

Now: what the gap buys employers

Today's 1.40%, holding steady, describes a workforce that shops around far less. For retention strategists the implication is direct: the panic premium is gone from the market, and blanket defensive raises are no longer the price of keeping a line staffed. That is not a license to freeze pay, quits respond to wage gaps with a lag, and the workers most likely to leave first are precisely the skilled trades hardest to replace. But it does mean retention spending can be targeted by classification and shift rather than sprayed across the roster, and that counteroffers can be reserved for genuinely scarce skills. Bargaining power has rotated toward the employer; the question is whether to bank the savings or reinvest them in the roles where the next squeeze will start.

The panic premium is gone from the market. The question is whether to bank the savings or reinvest them where the next squeeze will start.

The gap in dollars at a 600-person plant

Compute what the distance from the peak is worth. At the 2021-era pace near 2.1%, a 600-person plant would lose about 151 workers a year to quits; at today's 1.40%, about 101. With an assumed $28-an-hour wage and a replacement cost near $14,560 per departure, roughly a quarter of annual pay, the difference is worth about $733,824 a year in avoided turnover cost. That is the quiet dividend of a calmer labor market, and it is exactly the budget line worth redeploying into targeted retention before the cycle turns again.

Use the incentive pay cost calculator to price a targeted retention program for the classifications you can least afford to lose. Target the retention budget

Published 2026-07-13.