"ONS reports on redundancies in the UK (people forced to leave their job). However, people also chose to leave jobs. Twice as many people chose to leave their job voluntarily (resigned, given up for health/family/personal reasons, retirement or other reason) as those that leave involuntarily (either dismissed, made redundant or temporary job finished). Increasing occurrence of either one can be indicative of important changes to the labour market and the economy. This article analyses ‘job separations' – both voluntary and involuntary – and how the concept fits into labour supply/demand theory, using the Labour Force Survey (LFS), longitudinal LFS, and vacancies data from the ONS Vacancies Survey.The piece begins by explaining what involuntary and voluntary job separations are and looks at the influence of a growing or declining economy on the occurrence of the two types. It also looks at what different job separations can reveal about labour market behaviours. It finally looks at the factors that can influence job separations: industry and occupation type; job tenure; age; sex; ethnicity; and geography, before finally looking at what happens to people after job separations."

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