Abstract: Analyzing 604 social workers who intended to leave, this research found that a minority of these social workers were searching for new job opportunities while majority were not. Compared with the latter, the turnover intentions of the former are more balanced in gender distribution. They are younger, and working shorter years in the social industry, having stronger willingness to leave, higher job burnout, lower job satisfaction, lower professional identity, and more negative evaluation of the organizational environment. Logistic regression analysis showed that gender, working years in the field of social work, intention to leave, profession burnout, and professional identity increase or reduce the probability of social workers taking actions to seek opportunities to leave the social work industry. The results of this study provide important implications for social work institutions to prevent the loss of social workers.

Key words: social workers, turnover intention, turnover, logistic regression analysis