It has been widely reported on that a lot of people are leaving their job these days.
The Great Resignation, also known as the Big Quit and the Great Reshuffle, was a mainly American economic trend in which employees voluntarily resigned from their jobs en masse, beginning in early 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the most cited reasons for resigning included wage stagnation amid rising cost of living, limited opportunities for career advancement, hostile work environments, lack of benefits, inflexible remote-work policies, and long-lasting job dissatisfaction. Most likely to quit were workers in hospitality, healthcare, and education. In addition, many of the resigning workers were retiring Baby Boomers, who are one of the largest demographic cohorts in the United States.
Have you observed this around you? Do you see things "settling down" in any way?
Top comments (5)
Yes, in Spain it’s even worse because we don’t have a good situation here so people are quitting their jobs with no guarantee about getting another one.
Think about how stressed you must be to do that.
It’s also my story, I left my position at a company to work as a freelancer. Why? Because I won’t stand working 8-10 hours a day anymore, you spend the 75% of your life working, then you retire having barely 10-15 years to enjoy and that’s not right.
It’s true that I earn less than before, but I’m happier than ever because I decide when I need to work and when I need to rest. I don’t have to be afraid thinking if the company I’m at will get rid of me because I’m not productive enough, I have time for educating myself, my hobbies and to spent time with my people etc…
It’s 2022 and our work model is more than 100 years old, people is becoming aware.
I live in Montana and can confirm it is very noticeably real. Stores and food places everywhere around me closing early or not open at all due to being short staffed. It's getting better now, most places are opening and closing at regular times and a noticeable increase in staff overall.
Except for those that wanted a proper competitive salary bump. A lot of companies have a standard practice of not allowing significant salary increases to existing employees, however are more than willing to offer new employees those juicy salaries.
This is far too black & white of a statement. Some (if not many) have left their position due to toxic working environments - exactly as OP describes was their situation.
It's very noticeable where I am, many at all levels have left over the past year leaving a lot of knowledge gaps in management to development and testing. In places unblocking advancement as some people were more speed bumps to progress, and have not been missed.
If you have been interviewing you will also notice there are a lot of candidates out there as well.
I think there's definitely been a reprioritization of goals and expectations that caused a lot of people to reconsider their options. As a result, many people decided to leave their current job and that has created kind of a viscious cycle, where employees resign, increasing the pressure on the remaining employees and increasing open job opportunities, which encourages more employees to resign.
I changed companies about 4 months ago and while it was partially motivated by compensation and growth opportunities, the primary driver was that we had lost a lot of employees that I enjoyed working with, without any guidance from leadership on how they were going to retain the rest of the team.