Well that foreman, he's
a regular dog
The line boss, he's a fool
Got a brand new
flattop haircut
Lord, he thinks he's cool
One of these days I'm
gonna' blow my top
And that sucker, he's gonna' pay
Lord, I
can't wait to see their faces
When I get the nerve to say
Take this job and shove
it
I ain't working here no more
My woman done left and took all
the reason
I was workin' for
You better not try
to stand in my way
As I'm a-walkin' out the door
Take this job
and shove it
I ain't workin' here no more
– “Take This Job And Shove It” by Johnny Paycheck
The American “Great Resignation,” also known as the “Big Quit,” is the ongoing trend of employees voluntarily leaving their jobs, from spring 2021 to the present, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Great Resignation, a term first coined in 2019 by Texas A&M's Anthony Klotz, is here, and it's quite real. It is a post-widespread-vaccination phenomenon that is touching everyone from McDonalds workers to software engineers.
In April, the number of workers who quit their job in a single month broke an all-time U.S. record. But America’s quittin’ spirit was just getting started. In July, even more people left their job. In August, 4.3 million U.S. workers – almost 3 percent of the entire American workforce – voluntarily left their positions, the highest number since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking “quits” in 2020. That Great Resignation just keeps getting greater.
Workers are quitting at high rates in every industry, but the trend has been especially pronounced for frontline businesses like restaurants, hotels, retail stores and health care providers. Recent quit rates are a stark contrast to early in the coronavirus pandemic, when the number of quits plummeted to the lowest levels in a decade, as COVID-related business closures put millions of Americans out of work.
The Great Resignation comes at a time when businesses across the country are struggling to find workers to fill open positions. The Labor Department reports job openings, a measure of labor demand, jumped 749,000 to 10.9 million on the last day of July, the highest level since the series began in December 2000. It was the fifth straight month that job openings hit a record high.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports there were 10.4 million job openings in August, down slightly from the record of 11.1 million openings the previous month.
“The 'Great Resignation' is a sort of workers’ revolution and uprising against bad bosses and tone-deaf companies that refuse to pay well and take advantage of their staff. Millions of workers voted with their feet and walked out of their jobs – many without having another position already lined up. They no longer want to feel like victims.”
– Jack Kelly, CEO and of the Compliance Search Group and Senior Contributor Forbes
* According to a survey conducted by LinkedIn, 74 percent of those surveyed indicated that the time spent at home – either during shut-downs or working remotely – during the pandemic had caused them to rethink their current work situation.
* A great many – over half in several surveys – cite stress and burnout in their current position as a reason for looking elsewhere.
* Others point to dissatisfaction, and even fear, caused by knee-jerk cost-cutting actions by their current employer in response to Covid-19-related business slowdowns as a reason for bolting, with many finding fundamental unfairness in holds on promotions, frozen merit increases, and indiscriminate layoffs which impacted poor performers and stars equally, particularly as they watched executive leadership refuse to participate in the pain.
* Still others made evaluations, both with heart and head, around the true economics of a two-income household, determining that the benefits no longer outweighed the costs.
* Some finally took the leap and started a dream business. Many have simply had it with being undervalued and unheard by toxic, narcissistic managers.
* Finally, fully a third stated concerns with their personal safety in having to return to an on-site position while the pandemic still rages. So, with all of this going on, what can a typical small enterprise do to stem the tide -- particularly as larger, better-funded corporate competitors compete for the same, smaller talent pool?
(Phillip Kane and Grace Ocean. “The Great Resignation Is Here, and It's Real.” Inc. Aug 26, 2021.)
“We are really in a time to really reinvent work, and to create a more equitable, inclusive and fulfilling workplace for everyone. We have an opportunity to use technology and use what we’ve gotten from the pandemic to really change the nature of work and make it a better life for everyone.”
– Catalyst President and CEO Lorraine Hariton (October 12, 2021
Derek Thompson – economics, technology, and media writer for The Atlantic – reports on the Great Resignation …
“'Quits,' as the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls them, are rising in almost every industry. For those in leisure and hospitality, especially, the workplace must feel like one giant revolving door. Nearly 7 percent of employees in the 'accommodations and food services' sector left their job in August. Thanks to several pandemic-relief checks, a rent moratorium, and student-loan forgiveness, everybody, particularly if they are young and have a low income, has more freedom to quit jobs they hate and hop to something else.”
(Derek Thompson. “The Great Resignation Is Accelerating.” The Atlantic. October 15, 2021.)
Thompson believes this level of quitting is really an expression of optimism for workers that says, “We can do better.” Thompson explains …
“You may have heard the story that in the golden age of American labor, 20th-century workers stayed in one job for 40 years and retired with a gold watch. But that’s a total myth. The truth is people in the 1960s and ’70s quit their jobs more often than they have in the past 20 years, and the economy was better off for it.
“Since the 1980s, Americans have quit less, and many have clung to crappy jobs for fear that the safety net wouldn’t support them while they looked for a new one.
“But Americans seem to be done with sticking it out. And they’re being rewarded for their lack of patience: Wages for low-income workers are rising at their fastest rate since the Great Recession. The Great Resignation is, literally, great.”
(Derek Thompson. “The Great Resignation Is Accelerating.” The Atlantic. October 15, 2021.)
For the far smaller number of employers and bosses this economy must feel like economic chaos. Job openings are sky-high. Many positions are going unfilled for months. Meanwhile, supply chains are breaking down because of bottlenecks.
Low-wage workers aren’t the only ones quitting. In April, more than 700,000 workers in the bureau’s mostly white-collar category of “professional and business services” left their job – the highest monthly number ever. Across all sectors and occupations, four in 10 employees now say they’ve considered peacing out of their current place of work.
White-collar workers say they feel overworked or generally burned out after a grueling pandemic year, and they’re marching to the corner office with new demands. A recent Bloomberg–Morning Consult survey found that nearly half of workers under 40 said they might leave their job unless their employer let them continue to work from home at least part of the time.
(Derek Thompson. “What Quitters Understand About the Job Market.” The Atlantic. June 21, 2021.)
“If you go back to the old literature on work, remote workers were the low-status group in general. Part of it was because they just didn't have the social capital, from interacting with your coworkers on a day-to-day basis.
“Now, you could start to actually see the reverse where people make that as a bargaining chip for very valued employees. Maybe they're going to say: ‘You want to retain me, then I get to work remote three days a week.’ So it could be the opposite ... where remote workers are seen as more prestigious.”
– Adam Galinsky, professor at Columbia Business School who studies remote work
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