Quits rate rises for the first time in months, a possible crack in the "job hugging" freeze

The number of Americans quitting their jobs rose in September for the first time in months, according to data the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Tuesday, a small but closely watched signal that the caution gripping U.S. workers for much of the past year may be loosening slightly.

The agency's monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known as JOLTS, showed that job openings climbed to 7.5 million in September, up from a revised 7.19 million in August. Quits rose to 3.4 million, pushing the quits rate to 2.1 percent, after holding at 1.9 percent the month before. Hires held roughly steady at 5.4 million, and layoffs and discharges edged down to 1.6 million, a rate of 1.0 percent. The bureau described most of the headline measures as "little changed," the catchphrase it uses when a monthly shift falls within the survey's normal statistical noise.

• Job openings: 7.5 million in September, up from a revised 7.19 million in August
• Quits: 3.4 million, a rate of 2.1 percent, up from 1.9 percent in August
• Hires: 5.4 million, a rate of 3.4 percent, little changed
• Layoffs and discharges: 1.6 million, a rate of 1.0 percent, little changed
• Total separations: 5.3 million, a rate of 3.3 percent, little changed

A narrow but notable uptick

Economists who track the report treat the quits rate as a rough proxy for how confident workers feel about their prospects elsewhere. People tend to leave jobs voluntarily when they believe a better one is waiting; they hang on when they do not. By that measure, September's reading matters less for its size than for its direction: it is the first meaningful increase in the quits rate after what Indeed's Hiring Lab has described as a "low-hire, low-fire" stretch, in which the rate sat at or below 2.0 percent for seven consecutive months heading into this year.

The increase was not uniform across the economy. Quits rose most in accommodation and food services, where turnover tends to run high heading into the holiday hiring season, and fell in arts, entertainment and recreation. Job openings rose in state and local government outside of education, and regionally in the West and Midwest, while openings in the South declined. Over the year, the number of people quitting is still up by 375,000, the bureau's data show, suggesting September's move extends a gradual climb rather than a sudden reversal of direction.

A year defined by staying put

The report lands against the backdrop of a labor-market behavior that has acquired its own shorthand this year: "job hugging," the practice of staying in a role out of caution rather than satisfaction. A February survey by the career-services firm ResumeBuilder found that 57 percent of workers described themselves as job hugging, up from 45 percent in an equivalent survey conducted in August 2025. Among those workers, roughly seven in ten said they worried artificial intelligence could affect their job security, and more than six in ten said they feared being laid off within six months.

Stacie Haller, ResumeBuilder's chief career advisor, said the pattern reflects fear rather than devotion to an employer.

"Employers must recognize that their workforce may be composed of individuals who are staying not out of loyalty, but out of necessity and fear," Haller said, adding that workers who remain in roles that no longer use their abilities risk letting their skills stagnate.

The hesitation to switch jobs carries a measurable cost. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Wage Growth Tracker, which compares pay gains for people who change employers with pay gains for those who stay, put median wage growth for job switchers at 4.7 percent in September, versus 3.4 percent for job stayers — a premium of roughly 1.3 percentage points for taking the leap. Both figures were down slightly from August, when switchers saw 5.0 percent gains and stayers saw 3.6 percent, according to data series maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The gap has narrowed from the double-digit premiums job-switchers commanded during the post-pandemic hiring boom, but it has not disappeared, meaning workers who stay out of fear are still, on average, leaving some pay on the table.

Who feels it, and what comes next

The practical effects of the standoff fall unevenly. Workers who feel locked in describe a familiar set of pressures: the ResumeBuilder survey found that 52 percent of self-described job huggers had worked longer hours than usual, 35 percent had taken less vacation time, and roughly a fifth said they had been passed over for a raise or promotion they believed they deserved. More than eight in ten said they worried they would be the first let go if their employer's business slowed, a "last in, first out" anxiety that discourages the very job-hopping that might otherwise improve their pay.

Employers, in turn, face a workforce that is present but not necessarily engaged. Recruiters and workplace researchers have warned that a labor market where few people leave voluntarily can mask underlying dissatisfaction, since managers lose one of their clearest signals — resignations — for where retention problems are brewing. It also means hiring managers face less pressure to raise starting pay to lure talent away from rivals, since fewer workers are testing the market in the first place.

Not every measure of worker appetite points the same direction. Industry research from the technology trade group CompTIA estimated that roughly 31 percent of the labor force, about 53 million people, actively pursued a new job or career change between November 2025 and January 2026, even as the quits rate stayed subdued, and found that a large majority of non-searching workers say they would look harder if hiring conditions improved. That tension — a workforce that says it wants to move but mostly is not — is part of what makes September's modest uptick in quits worth watching rather than dismissing. The timing also coincides with the start of seasonal hiring, when retailers, delivery companies and hospitality employers add workers for the holiday shopping period, a stretch that typically churns both openings and quits in service industries regardless of the broader economic mood.

None of that changes overnight on the strength of one report, and labor economists are likely to caution against reading too much into a single month's data, particularly one the bureau itself flagged as largely unchanged. The clearer test will come as more data accumulate heading into the winter hiring season: whether October and November readings, along with the Federal Reserve's own commentary on the labor market at its upcoming policy meetings, show quits continuing to inch upward or settling back toward the subdued levels that have defined most of the year. A second or third consecutive increase would carry far more weight than September's alone in signaling that workers are regaining enough confidence to start testing the job market again, rather than bracing for whatever comes next.

For now, the September figures offer the labor market's most tentative kind of good news: not a rush back to job-hopping, but the first sign in months that the freeze may be starting, slowly, to thaw.