Skip to main content
Weekly Jobless Claims Jump to Three Month High
Weekly Jobless Claims Jump to Three Month High

I Quit: These Industries Have the Most Job Quitters

Meanwhile, 83% of all U.S. workers have at least one colleague they find annoying. Here's how to deal with it.
  • Author:
  • Publish date:

People have been quitting their jobs like crazy since the pandemic began in 2020.

Last year saw 47 million Americans leave their positions. And this year through August, at least 4 million people a month said sayonara to their current employers.

SmallPDF, a document management platform, put together a ranking by industry for number of quitters from April 2022 through August, using government data.

Accommodation and food services topped the list with an average monthly quit rate of 5.8% during that period, or 773,600 quitters per month. Retail sales placed second with a monthly quit rate of 3.82%, or 600,400 quitters per month.

Arts, entertainment, and recreation came in third with an average monthly quit rate of 3.58%, or 82,200 quitters per month. Professional and business services placed fourth at 3.36% and 754,000 quitters. Transportation, warehousing and utilities placed fifth at 2.82% and 199,400 quitters.

If you’re considering quitting yourself, just make sure you already have another job lined up or that you have enough savings so you can withstand time without work.

People Quit Due to Annoying Colleagues

One reason why you might want to quit is to rid yourself of difficult co-workers. LLC.org performed a study as to just how big a pain your co-workers are. LLC.org is an online information service about the limited liability company structure.

The survey found that 83% of employees have a co-worker who annoys them. These are the behaviors that drew complaints:

2

  • · 45% said complaining from colleagues bothers them
  • 42% cited laziness/poor work ethic
  • 39% mentioned arrogance
  • 38% said interrupting
  • 35% cited over-talkativeness
  • 32% mentioned negativity
  • 32% said entitlement
  • 27% cited poor communication
  • 26% mentioned oversharing
  • 25% said gossip.

Some colleagues can be worse than others. A total of 80% of workers say they have at least one terrible colleague, according to a survey by ResumeLab, an online resume advice site.

Some of us seem to work with quite a few nimrods. Among those of us suffering from this plight, 50% have three to four terrible co-workers, 34% have five to six, 15% have one or two, and 2% have six or more.

Dealing with the Knuckleheads

So what’s the best way of dealing with the knuckleheads? You may be tempted to punch them in the face. But that’s probably not the best solution. You could get fired, arrested and break your hand. And do you really want to inflict physical pain on a fellow human?

Avoiding the doofuses is the best solution, the report said. It quotes a Harvard Business Review paper written by Michael Houseman and Dylan Minor.

“One approach to managing toxic workers is simply avoiding them. However, in order to do so, we must be able to identify them ahead of time,” they wrote.

The survey showed that employees already are adopting that strategy: 89% of workers intentionally avoid the ding-dongs.

Avoidance is good “as long as it doesn't turn into a creepy hide-and-seek game, like in [the movie] Halloween, when Laurie Strode is hiding in the closet from Michael Meyers,” the report said.