The Great Resignation: 120K Virginians quit their jobs in October, per VEC

The Virginia Employment Commission tells us Monday that 120,000 Virginians quit their jobs, after 106,000 quit jobs in September.

The quits accounted for three-quarters of all job separations last month, according to the data.

This as employers are struggling to find people for their open jobs. The data, providing by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has us at less than one unemployed person per two job openings, the lowest rate since the BLS began collecting data back in 2001.

There were 330,000 job openings in Virginia in October.

There were 351,000 openings reported in September.

This should make it so that we’re in an employees’ market type situation, translating in higher wages.

Basically, if you want to hire somebody, you’re going to need to want to pay more.

The BLS data bear that out: wages are up 5.1 percent year over year, though the extra take-home has been more than lost to persistent inflation that has prices increasing 7.7 percent year over year.