State report: 95% of unemployed Hoosiers don’t even want a job

Graphic provided by Indiana Department of Workforce Development

By LAKYN McGEE

WISH-TV | wishtv.com

Employers have felt the impact of what is being called “The Great Resignation.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that a record 4.5 million Americans voluntarily left their jobs in November.

Fred Payne, the commissioner for the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, said 1,991,100 Hoosiers are unemployed. However, 94.99 percent of them don’t want a job.

Payne said there are 150,000 job postings in Indiana. He called this “The Great Reassessment.”

“Many folks took the past two years to explore what jobs are best for them,” Payne explained. “That includes quitting ones that were not working out for their lives.”

He said employers must shift to this need too.

“Employers are having to rethink job flexibility. They’re having to rethink pay. They’re having to rethink the ways they recruit people and how they retain people,” Payne said. “A lot of that is going on and employers are getting extremely creative because they’re trying to meet employees where they are in this particular job market.”

He said many Hoosiers quit their jobs to go back to school and apply for other jobs that give them a better-quality life.

Payne reiterated that if you quit your job, you will not receive unemployment.