A Quick Look at The Great Resignation

We’ve heard it everywhere and seen it take over all major headlines in the country. Yes, The Great Resignation, as experts call it, is a rather fitting term for a phenomenon where millions of American workers quit their current jobs and go in search of better pay, benefits and flexible working hours. As the coronavirus pandemic tightened its grips on the economy, you’d expect workers to cling on to their existing jobs and hope they don’t lose them. However, the pandemic has really changed the way we look at life, our jobs and our priorities. 

How it began

Flexibility was a key factor for many workers during the pandemic. Working from home became the new normal and slowly employees had a lot more control over their schedules. This cut down on a lot of expenses for the employer in the long run. This was also the period when workers saw the profits companies have collected during the pandemic. As a result, more and more workers felt the need to be acknowledged for the work they do in the form of higher wages and better benefits. Millions of workers then demanded increased and staged walkouts and strikes. Amid the labor shortage, rising inflation and supply-chain delays, workers had leverage over their employers. Workers saw the opportunity and took advantage of it in the form of labor movements and unionizing. Data shows that younger Gen-Z workers even took to unionizing and organizing themselves.

Boomers taking the lead

With this newfound leverage, worker stoppages and walkouts became a familiar sight every day all during the Great Resignation. But true to its name, workers resigning from their jobs was the key characteristic. One major narrative that took the lead was that younger workers were dropping out of work because they were getting by just fine with government aid. However, that wasn’t the case. Data shows that early retirement and boomers leaving their jobs for good added to the labor shortage far more than the younger workforce. Out of the 3.6 million Americans who left their jobs last month, a whopping 90% of them were above the age of 55! But before we lay the blame down, the pandemic created a high-risk situation for the older workers to get to work and truthfully, employers didn’t do much to lure workers out of retirement. 

Women rethinking jobs

Another group that added to the rising number of job losses was women. According to the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), just in September, women lost 26,000 jobs while men gained jobs. This gap in employment was a pattern that stood out throughout the Great Resignation. Since the beginning of the pandemic, women have been leaving their jobs in disproportionate numbers. Unsurprisingly, most of these women were mothers between the ages of 24 and 54. The flexibility that came with the pandemic may have been an added bonus to many, but for working mothers, it also meant finding support with childcare and multitasking. Women also felt undervalued and underappreciated at work, which was another reason why many of them started rethinking their jobs.

It’s easy to blame the pandemic for everything that’s going wrong economically. But even in the midst of all the destruction and loss it created, it sure did open small but significant doors for workers and their rights. This period has kickstarted a new chapter for labor movements and unionizing in the country. If anything, it’s taught us to ask for more and look for more. But above all, it’s certainly changed the way we look at our careers and The Great Resignation is a term that might just go down in history.