The Great… Switch-a-roo?
By, Valerie Lane
There are a few confusing things going on right now:
Everyone is starting a new job
“I Hate My Job” is everywhere on social media
Unemployment is super low & there are new jobs created each month
“The Great Resignation” is apparently very scary and real
Where did all the old-school supermarket check-out lines go?
Okay, that last one is a little off topic. But has anyone else been forced to sweat through unloading, scanning, and bagging a week’s worth of groceries for their family without the help of a supermarket employee? We love self-checkout for a box of tampons, 3 bananas, and a tub of ice cream. But for Easter dinner? Nuh-uh.
The conversations around labor markets are often overshadowed by things like war, a pandemic, and interest rates. (Really, the small stuff). But have you stepped back to consider what’s actually going on with this “Great Resignation” thing?
We can imagine hundreds of workers walking out on their jobs, mid scan, mid email, mid conversation. The liberation overcomes entire departments, and people just…leave. Or maybe it’s a little more ominous than that. Perhaps we stand at the entrance to an office floor and watch ghosts of past employees fade away, their desks creating cobwebs by the minute, their computers quickly outdated and suddenly very clunky.
…it’s not actually like that. According to Derek Thompson’s article in The Atlantic, people really do want to work and anyone not working right now really wants to. He reports that people aren’t quitting their jobs because they want to live off the grid and never work another day in their lives, but they are quitting becuase a LinkedIn recruiter found them and told them to apply to a better, higher paying job with unlimited PTO and remote work flexibility. Wouldn’t you take that offer?
Thompson points out that the usual grumblings around sending unnecessary emails and long meetings are normal complaints that Americans have. Actual things that make people hate their jobs are more serious than that.
In our opinion, the photographer who quits their 70 hour per week corporate job to spend more time with their kids and lean into a creative industry isn’t resigning completely, they are just… switching. From being employed by a corporation to being self-employed, people who leave to work for themselves are still working. They just have harder tax returns to file.
Career shifts have become a hot topic since the pandemic began, when many (not all—shoutout to the frontline workers!) were able to slow down and take a good, hard look at their lives and jobs. Many people took that slow time to work on their health. Others decided to do some soul searching around their careers. Some baked as many loaves of bread as possible and watched Schitts Creek 12 times over. We all make choices.
The point is, people are moving right now. They are changing jobs for better opportunities, moving to new houses, shifting their schedules to accommodate what they really want to be doing. Maybe that includes a 40 hour work week with kick-ass benefits and a giant backyard for the quarantine puppy. Maybe that looks like working from home and starting a business from a one bedroom apartment. Regardless, we think Thompson has a point: The Great Resignation may be a little overdramatized. Workers asking for pay they deserve and changing jobs to get it? That feels like “The Great Wake Up Call,” to us.