What does the September 2026 jump in quits mean for small businesses?
As of November 2026, the quits jump refers to the Bureau of Labor Statistics finding that 3.4 million U.S. workers voluntarily left their jobs in September, up 321,000 from August. For small businesses, it signals that the cost of employee turnover is climbing again, because every resignation triggers recruiting, onboarding, and lost output that Gallup estimates at one-half to two times the departing employee’s salary.
Who it hits: Owners who rely on one person for admin, scheduling, or customer follow-up feel each resignation immediately.
What it costs: Replacing a $50,000 role can run $25,000 to $100,000 under Gallup’s range.
What to do: Document key workflows now and add a backup layer, such as a dedicated virtual assistant, before the next resignation.
What the September JOLTS Report Changed
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for September 2026 on November 3, 2026. Most headlines focused on job openings, which rose to 7.5 million. The number small business owners should watch is quits. According to the BLS release, quits climbed to 3.365 million in September from 3.044 million in August, an increase of 321,000. The quits rate rose from 1.9 percent to 2.1 percent, and total nonfarm quits were up 375,000 over the year.
Hires also rose, to 5.4 million, while layoffs and discharges held near 1.6 million. In plain terms, employers are not pushing people out. Workers are choosing to leave, and other employers are hiring them.
The BLS describes the quits rate as a measure of workers’ willingness or ability to leave their jobs. When it rises, employees feel confident they can land something better. The largest single increase came in accommodation and food services, where quits rose by 197,000, but that confidence rarely stays in one industry. Once workers see peers switching jobs for better pay, the same conversation reaches front desks, back offices, and administrative roles everywhere.
Two caveats matter. September figures are preliminary and will be revised with the October release. And the BLS called the change in openings little changed. Pay data points the same direction, though. The Gusto Small Business Jobs and Pay Report, also published November 3, found small business average hourly earnings up 3.9 percent from a year earlier. Rising pay elsewhere gives your employees one more reason to test the market.
Which small businesses are most exposed to rising quits?
Small businesses with thin teams are most exposed to rising quits. When one office manager, scheduler, or customer service rep owns an entire function, a single resignation can stop invoicing, follow-up calls, and phone coverage until a replacement is hired and trained. Firms with no documented backup for those roles carry the highest risk.
Large companies absorb a resignation by spreading the work across a department. A ten-person company cannot. If your bookkeeper leaves, nobody else knows the month-end close. If your scheduler leaves, appointments slip and customers notice within days. The work does not disappear, so it lands on the owner or on coworkers who are already at capacity, which is exactly how one resignation turns into two.
Exposure is highest in three situations. The first is service businesses where response time drives revenue, such as home services, medical practices, and agencies, because missed calls become missed jobs. The second is health care, where Gusto’s October data shows small business hiring led all sectors with roughly 13,000 net hires, meaning practices are competing hard for the same administrative staff. The third is any business entering its busy season. November and December put extra load on ecommerce sellers, accounting groups, and retail support teams at the exact moment a key employee might accept an outside offer.
The common thread is concentration. The more of your operation that lives in one person’s head, the more a 2.1 percent quits rate should worry you. A quick test helps: if your best admin disappeared for two weeks without warning, which tasks would stop? That list is your exposure.
What does employee turnover actually cost a small business?
Employee turnover costs a small business between one-half and two times the departing employee’s annual salary, according to Gallup. That range covers recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, training, overtime for coworkers covering the gap, and lost productivity while a new hire ramps up. For a $50,000 administrative role, one resignation can cost $25,000 to $100,000.
Gallup’s research on voluntary turnover calls that range a conservative estimate. Applied to common small business salaries, it looks like this:
| Annual salary of the role | Low estimate (0.5x salary) | High estimate (2x salary) |
|---|---|---|
| $40,000 | $20,000 | $80,000 |
| $50,000 | $25,000 | $100,000 |
| $65,000 | $32,500 | $130,000 |
Most of that cost never appears on an invoice. It shows up as the owner spending evenings on job posts and interviews, as invoices that go out late, and as customers waiting longer for callbacks. Entry-level admin roles usually land near the low end of the range. Roles with deep process knowledge, like an executive assistant who manages your calendar, vendors, and inbox, land closer to the high end. Vacancy length matters most of all, because the longer a seat stays empty, the further toward the top of Gallup’s range the total climbs.
For comparison, consider one engagement from our own client work. A large South Florida dialysis center moved four eligibility and authorization positions from on-site staff to dedicated Virtual Worker Bee assistants. The original payroll for those four roles was $18,000 per month. The dedicated assistants cost $6,400 per month, a savings of $11,600 every month, and the split schedule gave the practice extended coverage with after-hours prep for the next day.
How can small businesses reduce turnover risk right now?
Reduce turnover risk by removing single points of failure before a resignation happens. These steps can be completed in weeks, not quarters:
- Map single points of failure. List every recurring task that only one person knows how to complete.
- Document the top ten workflows. Record short screen walkthroughs and checklists for invoicing, scheduling, and customer follow-up.
- Hold stay conversations this month. Gallup found 51 percent of exiting employees said no leader discussed their satisfaction or future in the three months before they left.
- Review pay against the market. Compare current wages with the 3.9 percent small business pay growth Gusto reported for October 2026.
- Separate core work from support work. Move repetitive admin tasks off your best people so their time goes to work they value.
- Add a backup layer for critical coverage. A dedicated, full-time virtual assistant can learn your workflows alongside current staff.
- Write the replacement plan in advance. Decide who covers each role during a vacancy and how fast you can fill it.
Steps one and two cost nothing but time, and they pay off even if nobody quits. Steps five and six are where the economics change. If repetitive work like data entry and records management moves to a dedicated assistant, your in-house team spends more of the day on work that keeps them engaged, and the business keeps running if one of them leaves.
In our experience matching owners with dedicated assistants, the businesses that recover fastest from a resignation already had a second person who knew the workflow before the first person gave notice.
Lost a key admin, or worried you could? We present three pre-screened, full-time candidates for each role, typically within 10 business days, so one resignation never stalls your operations.
Common Turnover Mistakes Owners Make
Owners often come to us right after a resignation, and the same few mistakes show up again and again.
Rehiring before fixing the workload. If the last person left because the role had grown into two jobs, the replacement will leave for the same reason. Before posting the job, look at which tasks can be split off or delegated.
Choosing part-time coverage to save money. It feels safer, but part-time workers usually need a second job to meet their income, and when one employer offers full-time hours, they leave the other. We stopped offering part-time placements for exactly this reason. Every assistant we place works a full-time, five-day schedule for one client.
Reading the quits jump as someone else’s problem. The September increase was concentrated in hospitality, but worker confidence spreads. Your administrative staff read the same headlines and see the same job postings.
Letting knowledge live in one inbox. When passwords, vendor contacts, and process steps exist only in one employee’s email, a two-week notice becomes a crisis. Shared drives and written procedures are cheap insurance.
Ignoring the hidden cost of a slow fill. Every week a role sits open, the owner or other staff absorb the work. That overtime and lost focus is part of the Gallup range, even though it never appears as a line item.
Avoiding these mistakes does not require a bigger HR budget. It requires deciding, before anyone gives notice, exactly how each critical role would be covered for the first 30 days after a resignation.
In-House Rehire vs. Dedicated Virtual Assistant
When a support role opens up, you can rehire locally or bring on a dedicated virtual assistant. Each fits different work:
| Factor | Rehire in-house | Dedicated Virtual Worker Bee assistant |
|---|---|---|
| Time to fill | Varies by market and role | Typically about 10 business days |
| Candidate screening | Your team screens every applicant | About 3% of candidates presented; you interview three |
| Payroll taxes and HR | Handled by your business | Handled by Virtual Worker Bee |
| If the person leaves | Restart the hiring process | Free replacement, plus free labor weeks after six months |
| Commitment | Employment at will | Month to month, 30-day notice after six months |
| Retention | Depends on your market | Assistant retention rate above 93% |
In-house hiring still makes sense for roles that need a physical presence, such as greeting patients or handling inventory. For work done on a screen, a dedicated assistant often wins on speed and stability. Our assistants handle inbox and calendar support as virtual executive assistants, inbound and outbound calls as remote call center agents, and prospect and market work through our research services.
Replacement protection grows with tenure. After six months with us, a replacement comes with one week of free labor, rising to four weeks at one year and six weeks at 18 months. Check-ins run weekly for the first month, bi-weekly through month six, then monthly, so problems surface early instead of ending in a surprise resignation. One question we hear constantly is whether an offshore assistant will stick around. Our assistant retention rate above 93 percent, and the reasons owners hire Filipino virtual assistants, answer that directly. During discovery calls, Tim Daniels and our team help owners decide which tasks belong with an assistant and which should stay in-house.
Frequently Asked Questions
The quits rate is the number of workers who voluntarily left their jobs during a month, divided by total employment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes it in the monthly JOLTS report. In September 2026, the quits rate rose to 2.1 percent from 1.9 percent in August, with 3.4 million total quits.
The BLS does not report why individual workers quit, but it describes the quits rate as a measure of workers’ willingness or ability to leave jobs. Rising hires and small business pay growth of 3.9 percent, reported by Gusto for October 2026, suggest workers feel confident they can find better opportunities elsewhere.
Gallup estimates the cost of replacing an employee at one-half to two times the person’s annual salary. For a $50,000 role, that is $25,000 to $100,000. The total includes recruiting, onboarding, training, coverage overtime, and the productivity lost while a new hire gets up to speed.
A virtual assistant can replace an employee whose work happens on a computer or phone, such as scheduling, data entry, inbox management, customer calls, or research. Roles requiring a physical presence still need an in-house hire. Many owners split the old role, keeping on-site tasks local and moving screen-based work to a dedicated assistant.
Virtual Worker Bee replaces the assistant at no cost. Clients with us longer than six months also receive one week of free labor with the new assistant, four weeks after one year, and six weeks after 18 months. Our assistant retention rate is above 93 percent, so replacements are uncommon.
Placement typically takes about 10 business days from the discovery call. Virtual Worker Bee presents three pre-screened candidates for each open role, and you interview and choose the one who fits. Every assistant works full time, five days a week, in eight consecutive hours set by your business.
Next Steps
See how other owners are handling small business hiring challenges in 2026.
Learn why owners hire Filipino virtual assistants for long-term support roles.
Explore virtual executive assistant and remote call center agent support.
Make the next resignation a non-event. Get matched with a dedicated, full-time assistant who learns your workflows.
