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What’s Causing The Great Resignation?

November 11th, 2021 by dk

Everybody’s talking about The Great Resignation. Three percent of all American workers  quit their job in August. Labor markets are roiling like we’ve never seen before. What’s going on?

Digging into the data, the largest disruption is among those in their 30s and 40s. Entry level jobs have always had a high churn rate, so the banners hung on seemingly every fast food establishment don’t tell the real story.

I did notice, for what it’s worth, that television ads are still recruiting new customers roughly 100 percent of the time, while franchisees are trimming their open hours because they can’t hire enough staff. Couldn’t at least one corporation use their scheduled ad spots to tell workers what a great employer they are? Sales promotions will only increase the burden on already overworked employees.

That’s certainly the company’s right, but those employees are increasingly recognizing their own right to walk out or not show up. Burger-flippers quitting their jobs is no surprise. When managers give up trying to find replacements and walk off the job themselves, that’s something new.

As with so many things, this cascade began with the Baby Boomers — notably those who were delaying retirement. Faced with learning Zoom and working from home, many decided to call it quits. Or they didn’t decide, but the surveillance metrics used by their companies showed that they weren’t performing.

Add the tardy retirements to those Boomers who were aging out on time and you have an unexpectedly large evacuation from the labor market. When companies began calling workers back to the office, more slippered Boomers chose retirement.

Losing so many tenured employees so quickly has had a ripple effect. Up-and-comers lost their mentors or their advocates and protectors. Once the person who hired and trained them announced their departure, the same option looked attractive to those who still have years ahead in the workforce. Economists have invented a term for this: “quits multiplier.” Workers are faced with doing more work with fewer colleagues. Instead, they join the quits.

Some have blamed pandemic relief checks and extended unemployment payments that accompanied statewide lockdowns. As data continue accruing, this argument looks only partially correct. States that ended relief earlier have seen no corresponding drop in resignations. So it’s not the money itself.

Pandemic relief gave some more money, but the bigger change has been on the other side of the ledger — fewer expenses.

It’s the money we can’t spend and the distractions we don’t get by spending it. How much money couldn’t be spent over the past 20 months at bars, restaurants, and concerts with friends? How much time did that leave people, alone at home, contemplating their lives, their careers, their futures?

You can binge-watch Netflix for only so long, when your workday has already given you hours of screen time. Curling up with a book or magazine — or worse, your own thoughts — becomes a surprisingly attractive option.

And then, along comes popular culture, coining a title and giving it capital letters. Suddenly, you see yourself in The Great Resignation narrative. The quits multiplier continues.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and archives past columns at www.dksez.com.

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