What jobs have the highest turnover?

Factual Questions
1

A recent IMHO thread about jobs in the non-profit sector being high turnover got me thinking about this. My current job (restaurant server) is also known for having pretty high turnover rates. Which is especially interesting, since we can make pretty good money for essentially unskilled work - I know for a fact that the servers at my restaurant average at least twice what the line cooks make (sure, there are slow nights and busy nights for us, while the cooks get a steady rate of pay, but we always come out ahead), and yet we seem to hire a new server every week while during the one year my restaurant has been open, they have hired exactly one new line cook.

I’ve heard telemarketer is extremely high. I imagine a lot of minimum-wage service jobs are pretty high - what else? Anyone have actual statistics?

2

Telemarketing.

3

I would imagine most things involving a lot of contact with “clients” and “customers”. These two are breeders of stress, and even though the pay may be good, sometimes people would rather keep their sanity and move on. As a server, you have to deal with every personality under the sun to get the order right, and those people don’t even know what they want and it’s always your fault, right? The cooks don’t have to deal with customers, only the servers and management. So if you’re a good cook and the pay is fair, you may stay a while more then servers that have to deal with, “the customer is always right…” -cringe-

Things like help desk positions, wait staff like you said, telemarketers, McJobs…

4

I know in the pizza delivery had a high turnover rate. Although there were a core of long-timers (I myself worked 4.5 years at the same store with about 4 drivers that had worked there longer), almost every week there were 1-2 new people to fill out a roster of about 15.

5

Truck driving is high turnover. Maybe not like the McJob, but considering the effort it takes to qualify, I think it’s right up there. People see it as an easy gig w/ good pay but, when they discover it’s not nearly as easy as it seems, plus the hours required, the money doesn’t look that great anymore. Even the drivers that stick w/ it tend to change companies every few years, looking for a better deal. They are usually disappointed.

6

Game show contestant.

7

Suicide bomber.

8

:smiley: Good answers.

9

Official statistics are kept by the Department of Labor. www.dol.gov search on “turnover.” They are broken down by industry, listing hospitality and restaurant as the highest.

10

I don’t have a cite, but salespeople in the car business tend to turn over at a high rate. It’s rare for one to stay at the same place for more than a year. There are also a lot of people who want to try it, but find it’s not for them fairly quickly. 100% commission tends to weed out the poor performers quickly.

11

Any job that hires high school students, like fast food. When you’re not working to support yourself, it’s very easy to quit.

12

I don’t have specific numbers, but I see a lot of “churn” with bank tellers. The volume of people flipping in and out is large enough that we built a system that lets branch managers provision their own user’s login IDs

13

I worked at an ice factory in Texas for a summer about 12 years or so ago.

I remember going in for a jog inquiry/interview. Without hardly even looking at my app or even me really they said sure we will hire you just stick around in shouting distance for a bit.

About 15 min later they called me in for work.

WOW!! That was a tough job.
There were 6 people in the bagging area and all of them had been there for quite some time. The 7th persons job was to stack bags of ice on the pallet. This one particular machine took three people to run. One on each side of a conveyor belt. The machine bags a 6# bag of ice every second. One person would grab a bag a second for six seconds then pass it through the machine that tied the bag shut while he was doing that the other person was bagging six other bags.

So a 36#bag of ice you had to stack every 6 seconds.

Better not take 7 seconds…

Those two dude would not stop for anything. If it took seven seconds to stack the pallet a 36# bag was falling on you. by the time you go that off of you another would fall. They would be laughing. Sometimes they would let you catch up by setting the bags to the side and and since they were speedy and good they would be able to them slam a 36# bag a second through the tying machine. Almost instant burial.

I got it though. I had stacked pallets before. I was also determined to do this job. After three days I was one of the guys and was a bit hit. They hadn’t had a person last more than a day in a long tie. I moved up to the bagging part of the machine and then when the new guys came I learned why the turn over was so High. There was a fun game to see how many people we could make quit in one day. By storing up some extra bags and really burring the dudes that came to work.
I suppose we averaged about 1-2 people quitting a day. And up to 5 or 6 on a good day.

Oh yea, one 15 min break and one 30 min lunch. Other than that Ice all day. Unless of course we had to wait a few min till we unburied a person and waited for the next hire.

We had people last 15 min. In the 4-5 months I worked there no one else made it past three days. If you wanted a job there you could get one.

It is amazing what you can do in six seconds when you get the hang of it.

The big thing we always said.

“It’s Just Ice”

I still use that all the time for my own personal joke with just about everything I do. It’s just paint. It’s just snow.
what ever.

14

I see this at banks, but not so much at my credit unions. A noticeable factor in the turnover I’ve seen at my CUs (two) is due to promotions. The managers at my CUs started out as tellers…I don’t think that happens much at banks.

Actually, now that I think of it, pretty much ALL the high turnover jobs I can think of also lack much opportunity for advancement. Truck driving has been mentioned, fast food, machinists…Maybe when you don’t expect to be rewarded for long service, there is not much incentive to think twice when someone offers you a nickle more an hour.

15

Migrant farming or substitute teaching.

16

In Tennessee, State Driver’s License Examiners.

Low qualification requirements, great pay, benefits, uniform allowance, pensions.

And the highest number of on-the-job assaults in Tennessee State Civil Service, even more than Prison Guards or State Troopers.

17

Emergency medical services, especially private services, have high turnover rates as well. Unfortunately, I can’t find any hard numbers, but it’s widely acknowledged as a problem in the industry.

18

I know my school district is almost always looking for substitute teachers/bus drivers.

19

This intrigues me - why would Driver’s License Examiners have the highest rate of on-the-job assaults?

20

Because a big part of their job is saying 'no".

And because Civil Sevants in TN get assaulted at a rate 3X higher than retail workers in similar positions.

People in this State really don’t like Government. :smack: