South Dakota Has 3rd Highest Number of Workers Quitting Jobs

This phenomenon of people quitting their jobs and staying quit has been given an official title: The Great Resignation or if you'd prefer - The Big Quit.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics which did a state-by-state examination of quit rates in August of this year, the states with the highest rates of employees quitting their jobs at the time of the survey were:

Kentucky
Idaho
South Dakota
Iowa

Overall 4.3 million people left their jobs in August, with the majority of those jobs in the leisure and hospitality fields.

Nearly 7 percent of employees in the “accommodations and food services” sector left their job in August. That means one in 14 hotel clerks, restaurant servers, and barbacks said sayonara in a single month. - Derek Thompson / The Atlantic

So it's no wonder that dining out in Sioux Falls has become a hit-and-miss proposition. Nearly every business in town has put out their "now hiring" or "help wanted" sign, but still remain understaffed.

The pandemic has given people all kinds of reasons to change direction. Some people, particularly those who work in low wage jobs at restaurants, are leaving for better pay. Others may have worked in jobs that weren't a good fit but were waiting out the pandemic before they quit. And some workers are leaving positions because they fear returning to an unsafe workplace. - Andrea Hsu/NPR

What the pandemic gave a lot of people was time and space. More time with family, more time to think about the space and place you're living in And, time to contemplate a future that may not be as lucrative as you hoped, but is a better fit emotionally and career-wise.

Sources: The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Burea of Labor Statistics, and NPR