“When labor supply is barely growing, monthly job gains are naturally going to run low.” That’s Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, speaking at Jackson Hole last week. He was talking about the broader economy, but he could have been describing exactly what I’m seeing in accounting and finance hiring across Dallas and Fort Worth right now.
New BLS data released this week backs him up. The national quits rate dropped to 1.9 percent in July, down from 2 percent in June — the lowest it’s been since 2020. Quits fell by 157,000 to 3.06 million.
That number matters more than it looks like it does. Economists use quits as a proxy for how confident workers feel about the job market — people don’t resign without a landing spot unless they’re desperate, and right now most aren’t jumping without one. Warsh’s read is that this is a supply story: retirements are elevated, immigration is exceptionally low, and there simply aren’t as many people moving through the workforce as there used to be, on either end. Watching candidates and clients across Dallas and Fort Worth every week, what that tells me is that good accounting and finance people are staying put.
This isn’t the 2021–2022 market, when strong candidates were fielding calls weekly and treating job changes almost casually. That pool of active candidates has been shrinking for a while, and this data says it’s basically dried up.
What Hiring Managers Get Wrong
Here’s what hiring managers get wrong when they see a headline like this: they assume a lower quits rate makes hiring easier, since there’s less competition for candidates who are actively looking. It’s the opposite. When fewer good people are quitting on their own, the ones who do move are more selective about why. They’re not leaving because they’re bored or annoyed at their boss. Something specific pulled them — better scope, a firm they respect, comp that reflects what they bring, a growth path they don’t have now. Layoffs have stayed flat too, so nobody’s worried about losing their current seat. The only thing that moves someone out of a stable job is a genuinely better opportunity, not a slightly higher number on a job board.
What This Means for DFW Hiring
For boutique firms and mid-market companies here in DFW, that changes the math on how you source. Posting a job and waiting for applications was never a great strategy for senior accounting and finance roles, but it’s a weak one right now, because the applicants coming through that channel skew toward people who are unhappy or between jobs — not the people who are simply excellent and open to the right conversation. The people you actually want aren’t applying anywhere, because they don’t have to.
That’s the value of working with someone who knows this market — not speed, not volume, but the ability to have a real conversation with someone who wasn’t looking and make the case for why this move actually makes sense for them. In a market this tight on the supply side, chasing a fast fill usually means settling for whoever happened to be looking instead of the person who’s actually the best fit.
If you’re sitting on an open seat and wondering why the applications don’t look like the people you actually want, this is probably why. The people you want aren’t quitting. Somebody has to go find them.