Numbers released by Chicago-based outplacement and business and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. came on on the same day President Biden announced new federal guidance and deadline for tens of millions of workers to get vaccinated.
RELATED: Most US employees must get shot or test weekly for COVID by Jan. 4
"Roughly 5,000 people that lost their jobs in the last month due to COVID vaccine refusal made up actually 22% of the total number of people that we tracked being let go across the country," the firm's Senior VP Andy Challenger told our sister station KGO-TV.
Challenger said since vaccines became widely available to adults in June, more than 6,800 workers have been cut or left their jobs because of vaccine mandates.
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He anticipates numbers will grow, following the new federal deadline for two-thirds of the country's workforce announced on Thursday.
Businesses with at least 100 employees have until Jan. 4 to require workers to be fully vaccinated or face weekly testing.
"As I'm talking to companies, as I'm talking to HR leaders, there really is a lot of turmoil within their organizations across just about every sector," he added.
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Peter Leroe-Munoz with the Silicon Valley Leadership Group in California's Bay Area says its 350-plus member companies have consistently supported vaccine mandates.
"I think that is a credit really, to the kind of forward-thinking of our region," Leroe-Munoz shared. "And it's served us well."
He said the news is important for economic recovery and for the return to pre-pandemic practices.
"It allows for things like greater working in-person collaboration, it allows for visiting different work sites, R&D sites as well," he said.
Elsewhere, the Biden Administration's vaccine rules for businesses will impact more than 100 million workers around the U.S.