Forget about watching the unemployment rate or the pace of job growth.

“I quit” will be the employment phrase to watch in a year when, curiously, the man who popularized “You’re fired” became president.

Plenty of consumer confidence polls and scores of retailing data points help us gauge the psyche of America’s shoppers. But no one statistic speaks better to our overall sense of financial security than the lightly discussed government tally of the folks who voluntarily left their jobs.

Quitting is a big statement by any worker bee. In most cases, one doesn’t tell the boss goodbye before a happy landing is prepared. This kind of economic leap requires fairly significant confidence in personal finances and job prospects.

Like we’re seeing now.

Quitting hasn’t been this frequent since the turn of the century as workers today depart voluntarily at a pace that means roughly 1-in-4 might leave a job this year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Basically, it’s become more of a worker’s market for many employees. Fresh data from government job trackers shows quits on the rise in a big way: 3.22 million Americans left their jobs in January, up 11 percent in a year and the highest one-month quit count in 16 years. That I-am-outta-here frenzy put January’s quit pace at 2.2 percent of all U.S. workers. The last time it was higher was in 2005.

The best regional snapshot is a breakout for Western states: 822,000 quits in January, up 20 percent in a year and more than double the cyclical low of 347,000 in January 2010.

That wave of resignations equals a quit rate of 2.5 percent of all workers in California plus Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. The West was tops for quit rates among the four regions tracked nationwide for the first time since August 2009. And the last time the West’s quit rate was higher was in 2001.

When the Robert Half staffing firm recently polled chief financial officers about workplace conditions, 52 percent felt they didn’t have enough “worker engagement” – a critical factor in employee satisfaction.

Brett Good, Half’s senior district president in the Los Angeles area, thinks CFOs are growing concerned about worker happiness as surging labor costs hit corporate bottom lines – from paying up to keep key personnel as well as attracting new hires.

One government study showed Southern California leading the nation’s major job centers in salary gains in three of last year’s four quarters. Half’s CFO survey showed Los Angeles with the nation’s highest share of engaged employee among major metro areas – a result that Good says speaks to a healthy local economy.

Southern California workers with skills in key specialized areas are being rewarded with numerous suitors for their talents, Good says. Like workers in accounting, finance, technology, digital media, legal and compliance fields, to name a few.

“Counter-offers and multiple offers are not uncommon,” he says.

Quits are a bit of sweet revenge for workers who’ve seen wages stagnate and harsh workplace conditions this century, especially in the years after the Great Recession. Disappointing hiring patterns caused numerous workers to stay in place in a job longer than expected.

According to one government measure of worker longevity, the typical U.S. worker was with their current employer for 4.2 years last year vs. 4.6 years post-recession in 2012, and 4 years during the last expansion in 2006.

“I quit” is the new black.

Contact the writer: jlansner@scng.com