LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Alex Carter worked in customer-facing positions for the first decade of his career, but after 12 months of running a bank branch during the pandemic and enduring an increasingly angry and defiant clientele, he reached his breaking point.
“I loved building relationships with my clients, but it gets very old having someone yell at you about something that's out of your control,” Carter said.
Last month, after applying to 29 jobs and going on several interviews, he started a new position at a local fabricating company, trading the challenge of short-fused customers for the ease of spreadsheets.
“I’ve been there just shy of two months now and it's the greatest decision I’ve made," he said.
Carter’s story is not uncommon across Kentucky, which saw the nation’s highest rate of workers quit their job in August, according to recently released data from the Bureau for Labor Statistics (BLS). All told, 84,000 Kentuckians left their jobs in August, up 26,000 from July. Like Carter, many moved on to new jobs. Kentucky saw 103,000 hirings in August, good for fifth in the nation.
That data “suggests a very tight labor market in Kentucky, arguably the tightest in the nation,” said Charles Aull, a senior policy analyst with the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. “High quit rates tend to indicate worker confidence in being able to find a different job.”
The BLS data supports that thinking, showing 167,00 open jobs in the state and only 85,000 unemployed workers. That means there are far more open jobs than there are people to fill them, giving job hunters more leverage.
Many businesses are responding by increasing pay and benefit packages. BLS data released Friday showed that wages jumped by 1.5% in the third quarter of 2021 and the value of benefits increased 0.9%. No one saw more of an increase than job switchers, who saw pay jump by 5.4% compared to the same month last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That’s the highest in nearly 20 years.
Those enticements may help explain why so many Americans are looking for new work. A July survey of 1,000 American workers conducted by the website MagnifyMoney, found that a third of workers are thinking about leaving their jobs and 19% are actively searching for a new one.
The top two reasons people said they're looking to change jobs is to make more money, or to work from home. The third reason is burnout, followed by a desire for a better work-life balance.
Carter said burnout was a factor in his decision to begin looking for a new job. “The biggest issue I had was the attitude and the self righteousness of the people who decided they were done wearing a piece of cloth on their face,” he said.
He also wanted a job that meant more to him and after years working for a major, national bank, he thought he might find that by transitioning to a local company.
“Something that’s always been really big to me is supporting local any time I can,” he said. “A lot of times, that’s easiest to do in restaurants, but there’s so many awesome industry-leading companies based here in Louisville.”
During the summer, as he fired off more than two dozen applications, mostly to large companies, he also applied to two jobs at local businesses. He immediately felt the difference between the two. The large companies, for the most part, never responded to his inquiries, while both local companies reached back out within 24 hours.
In his new job, Carter has the freedom to propose new ideas and the company is nimble enough to actually try them. That's left him happier and working harder. “I’m a lot more eager to put more into this job because of how they treated me versus other companies in the past,” he said.