Finance quits run at 0.9 percent, less than half the private-sector rate

BLS published the September job openings report on November 3, and one line in it stopped me. Across private employers, quits rose by 311,000 to 3.19 million. In finance and insurance, they fell to 61,000.

That works out to a quit rate of 0.9 percent a month for finance, against 2.3 percent for private employers overall. A year ago finance sat at 1.3 percent, or 89,000 quits. Workers elsewhere are leaving jobs more often while finance workers are leaving less.

Fewer exits, fewer seats

Most seats open because someone quit. When quits drop, hires drop with them. Finance and insurance made 104,000 hires in September, down 32 percent from 152,000 a year earlier.

I think the pattern is simple. When fewer people quit, fewer seats open, and the seats that do open go to bankers who already know what they're worth.

The payroll side agrees. The October jobs report, out this morning, puts commercial banking at 1,346,200 jobs, down from 1,372,300 a year ago. That's 26,100 fewer, about 1.9 percent (seasonally adjusted, preliminary). I wrote about the depository number in my October 16 post, and about open seats per hire in an October 2 post. BLS has since revised August to 331,000 openings and 112,000 hires, so the numbers in that one have moved.

Why people may be staying

The data can't say. My guess is caution. Bankers have watched a year of merger announcements and staff cuts, and a person sitting on a book, a title and a bonus date doesn't walk without a reason. That's a guess from 25 years of watching banks.

What I'd do in a quiet market

If you're thinking about a move, set your own timeline. September still had 289,000 open seats in finance and insurance, so seats exist. Put your numbers on one page: new relationships booked and loans originated.

If you're staying, stay on purpose. Write down what would make you leave. If you can't come up with anything, you're probably staying on inertia, which is a fine reason as long as you know it's the reason.

If a recruiter calls, 20 minutes costs you nothing and tells you what your seat is worth today.

What this data does not say

Five limits.

Finance and insurance is a wide bucket. It includes insurers and brokers alongside banks, and I didn't find a banking-only line in this release.

It's national. I didn't pull a California series, so I can't say California bankers quit less than anyone else.

September is preliminary and BLS revises it. Industry-level estimates in this survey are also noisy, and I haven't checked the standard errors, so read the move from 1.3 to 0.9 percent as a direction.

It doesn't say why people stay. Low quits could mean happy or nervous. I lean toward nervous, and that's a lean.

It doesn't separate producers from support staff. The commercial banking jobs count covers everyone in the industry, from tellers to executives.