For some time, many people, myself included, have been telling a story about this situation that goes by the name of the Great Resignation. That tale goes like this: The Covid pandemic caused many Americans to reconsider whether they really wanted or needed to keep working. Fear of infection or lack of child care kept some workers home, where they discovered that the financial rewards of their jobs weren’t enough to compensate for the costs of commuting and the unpleasantness of their work environment. Older workers, forced into unemployment, decided that they might as well take early retirement. And so on.
Well, when my information changes, I change my mind — a line often but dubiously attributed to John Maynard Keynes, but whatever. And the past few months of data have pretty much destroyed the Great Resignation narrative.
A few months ago, it still seemed reasonable to talk about a Great Resignation. At this point, however, there’s basically nothing there. It’s true that an unusually high number of workers have been quitting their jobs, but they have been leaving for other, presumably better jobs, rather than leaving the work force. As the labor economist Arindrajit Dube says, it’s more a Great Reshuffling than a Great Resignation.
I see his point, but from the perspective of a company still mired in the “they should feel grateful for having a job” mentality it still looks like a great resignation. After all, you still resign from company A no matter if you are going to company B or leaving the workforce entirely.
So, is the belief that Covid magicked into existence millions of ‘better’ jobs that didn’t exist before? This is where I think the Resignation concept must come into play, unless we have evidence of tremendous ‘better job’ creation in the wake of Covid.
People get comfortable. I have been in a situation where I was forced to find a new job, which led to much better things for me, but I should have done so on my own long before that. COVID changed people’s thinking about a lot of things. A lot of people started their own businesses that they were afraid to before, people realized what was really important to them. Also certain employers showed their asses the way they acted towards their employees during a pandemic. Hard times gives perspective, perspective leads to life changes. A pretty hot economy also helps.
Yeah. “Better” is ambiguous. It’s possible that Covid made some jobs so bad that other jobs, previously considered equivalent or slightly worse now seem “better.”
Well, if you look at the March US jobs report, almost all the jobs lost at the beginning of COVID have been replaced. But at the same time, a lot of the businesses that existed pre-COIVD have disappeared.
So someone is creating new jobs, different jobs. If those tend to be better than the one that still exist, this puts pressure on the older jobs. Someone who has spent years or decades treating their employees like replaceable cogs probably has a hard time readjusting their attitude. Someone starting out to build a new business in the current climate is more likely to be a better boss, because of the “employment crisis”. There’s no way someone just entering the business market can be entirely ignorant of what’s been going on.
So let’s hear some evidence, folks. Anecdotes accepted!!!
How many fast food places around you are still closed one day a week?
Is your local Walmart, which used to be open 24 hours, still closing at 9 pm?
Do you still see signs everywhere you go “now hiring-- $16 /hour”?
But according to Paul Krugman’s article in the link, unemployment rates have returned to normal, which implies that if you resigned from A, the manager at A was easily able to replace you. Is this true? Come on, folks–let’s hear anecdotes! (or real facts, if you have 'em.)
Almost all the service jobs here in Bozeman are advertising high teens to low $20s. Wal-Mart is offering $21.50 plus benefits for night stockers. Smith’s (Kroger) can’t staff the pharmacy or the deli.
Sort of. In the same OP/ED, Krugman notes two other factors that do kind of suggest this.
The number of self-employed has increased, so a lot of small businesses may have started up by people who left their old jobs and, due to the pandemic, had less to fear about taking that chance. Not sure those would be ‘better’ jobs, but it’s something.
Also, immigration tanked during Trump’s term, and some portion of those (highly educated and motivated) would have taken jobs that might well be ‘better’ than average.
I am not an economist, but Krugman mentions some possibilities in the linked article:
First, as the economist Dean Baker has been pointing out, the most commonly cited measures of employment don’t count the self-employed, and self-employment is up by a lot, around 600,000 more workers than the average in 2019.
Second, a point that receives far less attention than it should is the decline of immigration since Donald Trump came to office, which turned into a plunge with the coming of the pandemic. … Many immigrants are working age and highly motivated; their absence means that we shouldn’t have expected employment to maintain its old trend.
That’s not what the OP/ED says. It says labor force participation for 25-54 year olds (the % who are employed) is back to normal. That’s not quite the same as overall unemployment rate.
Remember how Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life bought up almost all of the businesses during the depression? My uninformed opinion is that a lot of consolidation has been going on these past couple years.
In my industry, both of our two hospitals were absorbed by large, statewide hospital groups. A handful of doctors gave up their independent practices to work for the man, too. A large local multi-specialty group sold out to one of the regional hospitals. Our local home health agency was acquired by a larger regional agency. &etc.
For one anecdote, minus a couple sick days our office is fully staffed and has been since January. It only took a couple weeks to fill the most recent vacancy, comparable to pre-COVID vacancy-to-hire turnaround.
Of course, if you work for Door-Dash or Uber or one of those gig jobs where you trade the equity in your car for cash, then you are technically “self employed” as well.
Of course, but not all of them are. And, if so, apparently paid well enough not to take up offers by all those restaurants and businesses still clamoring for labor.
A significant number of workers that were nearing retirement age decided to go ahead and retire a bit early rather than trying to re-enter the workforce. Some of those lost their jobs during Covid and decided against trying to find new work, which can be tricky if you are a highly seasoned professional. Others aren’t comfortable returning to work, due to being older and possibly having other health conditions.
Not to mention, Covid has killed around 1 in 300 Americans and left countless others with lingering problems that prevent them from working.
This has resulted in job vacancies weighted towards higher level positions. People move up in the company to fill them. Then the college grads that have been working fast food because they couldn’t get a real job fill the entry and lower level positions.
This dynamic concentrates the job openings in food service and retail.
A piece of capital equipment is equity. Any asset you own is equity. Your equity is your assets minus your debts and liabilities.
The point being that they could have a car that got them to work and back for ten years, and then have decent value as a trade-in, or they can work for doordash and their car will be broken down and worthless in two.
It seems decent upfront money for your time, but once you figure in wear and tear on the car, you’re making less than you would working for an hourly wage at a fixed location. Especially now with the price of cars, both new and used, as well as repairs, going up quite a bit right now.
I don’t even think you need to have the perspective of a company mired in that kind of old fashioned mentality. We’ve had a lot of people resign from my company, and the vast majority of them are doing so because they’ve found employment elsewhere. It didn’t occur to me that the Great Resignation meant that a significant number of workers were dropping out of the workforce altogether. They were just more willing to quit whatever job they had to seek something different.
My own department, HR, has historically had a very low turnover rate, but in the last year we’ve suffered a terrible bout of resignations. For the first time in my HR career, I’ve had headhunters contacting me directly asking if I’m interested in various positions. Even one of our mediocre performers resigned to take an HR position with another company closer to her home and received a raise. While this has caused us a lot of problems, I don’t begrudge any of my former coworkers for making decisions based on what works best for them.
There’s an idea floating around that the Great Resignation might be followed by the Great Regret.
I know we’ve had a few employees at my company come back a few months after they resigned. Turns out their new employer wasn’t the great opportunity they were looking for. I really like my company, so I don’t have a keen interest to seek employment elsewhere. But I’m starting to at least consider taking a serious look at what’s available in my area.
We have self employment increases, early retirements, and mortality generating vacancies at higher level positions. People working in lower level positions move up, and a lack of immigration means fewer workers in the economy to take on the vacancies in lower level positions.
I think this is a fair description of what’s happened, but I don’t know that either the Resignation, or Reshuffling descriptor is entirely accurate.