Another 4 million workers quit for the 4th month in a row, and it shows how Americans are rethinking work in a way they haven't in decades

• For the fourth month in a row, workers quit their jobs at a record rate.
• It may reflect workers' desire for higher wages, better benefits, or more job satisfaction.
• But it could also reflect the Delta variant holding back recovery and keeping people from in-person work.

A record number of workers quit their jobs in July - again.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary released Wednesday showed that workers were still reconsidering and leaving work en masse even as job openings reached a record high.

In July, 3.98 million workers quit their jobs, an increase from 3.87 million in June. That came in slightly below April's record-breaking 3.99 million quits, the highest level since the bureau began tracking the data in 2000.

At least 3.6 million workers have quit their jobs each month for one-third of the year. It's a quitting trend unlike anything seen in at least the past two decades. And it could signal that 2021 will be filled with employers scrambling to hire people who are rethinking what they want out of work and acting on it.

As Insider's Ben Winck reported, job openings have climbed for seven months and have reached record highs for five straight months. While economists had predicted that July openings would fall below 10 million, they rose to a record high of 10.9 million. That means openings still outnumber jobless workers who could fill them. Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed, wrote on Twitter that openings had reached pre-pandemic levels across all major industry sectors.

-Nick Bunker (@nick_bunker) September 8, 2021

But July's quits rate signals that workers still aren't ready for a return to normal. It could be that they're holding out for higher-paying roles, or ones with better benefits. Americans have for months been rethinking work as the economy reopens. Some might be feeling what Fortune magazine called "turnover shock," where a major event - a pandemic would definitely qualify - causes one to reconsider their satisfaction with work.

The July jobs data indicated that wages had ticked up for everyone, with 9.6% wage growth in leisure and hospitality over the previous year. Upping wages has been one effective mechanism for hiring and retaining workers in the hot labor market.

And the quits rate in leisure and hospitality did drop slightly in July, falling to 5.1% from 5.2% in June. But that still means that 780,000 leisure and hospitality workers quit their jobs in July, signaling a continued reluctance to remain in low-wage in-person jobs.

Importantly, the July data likely doesn't wholly reflect the curveball that the Delta variant has thrown at the economy. At the end of July, as the more contagious variant spread through the US, markets wavered, and experts predicted that the variant, if left unchecked, could shutter some areas of economic recovery. As Winck reported, the dismal jobs numbers from August indicated it had done just that.

The Delta variant may have played a role in driving some of those quits, as health-concerned workers hastened to quit in-person roles.

-Elise Gould (@eliselgould) September 8, 2021

All told, it was yet another month of unprecedented quits and openings. As the economy has slowly reopened, economists have pointed to September as the month when a clearer picture of shortages - which are right now likely driven by virus fears and a lack of childcare - will emerge. If quits remain this high, an even bigger realignment of work could be coming.