The Great Resignation

[Ibanez]

As I wrote in the spring, quitting is a concept typically associated with losers and loafers. But this level of quitting is really an expression of optimism that says, We can do better. You may have heard the story that in the golden age of American labor, 20th-century workers stayed in one job for 40 years and retired with a gold watch. But that’s a total myth. The truth is people in the 1960s and ’70s quit their jobs more often than they have in the past 20 years, and the economy was better off for it. Since the 1980s, Americans have quit less, and many have clung to crappy jobs for fear that the safety net wouldn’t support them while they looked for a new one. But Americans seem to be done with sticking it out. And they’re being rewarded for their lack of patience: Wages for low-income workers are rising at their fastest rate since the Great Recession. The Great Resignation is, literally, great.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ng/620382/

https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving- ... esignation

Employees between 30 and 45 years old have had the greatest increase in resignation rates, with an average increase of more than 20% between 2020 and 2021.

While resignations actually decreased slightly in industries such as manufacturing and finance, 3.6% more health care employees quit their jobs than in the previous year, and in tech, resignations increased by 4.5%.

I'm curious if anyone else is experiencing this in professional fields. Tech certainly is. We're losing people to companies that'll pay more AND let you work remote. Our organization is examining our flexible work policies and I hope we match what is being done at other banks and tech b/c we are certainly experiencing a "Great Resignation."

[93henfan]

My ten-person division just hired its first remote worker. She lives in Idaho. I'll likely never meet her in person. She makes about $25K less than a DC employee, being on the "Rest of US" locality scale, but her cost of living is likely cheaper to offset that a little.

Interestingly, if I chose to be reclassified as a remote teleworker after COVID, I'd have to change my "work address" from DC to my home in DE, and I'd take about a $5-10K cut moving to the Philly locality scale, which DE falls under. I won't do it though, because the Agency is already exploring a one day per week in the office policy once COVID is over. Nobody wants to return to the old gridlock days in DC. Ain't nobody got time for that.

So, when COVID passes, I'll be a DC-based employee teleworking four days per week. I can handle that. COVID has been a blessing for my quality of life.

[Baldy]

As I wrote in the spring, quitting is a concept typically associated with losers and loafers. But this level of quitting is really an expression of optimism that says, We can do better. You may have heard the story that in the golden age of American labor, 20th-century workers stayed in one job for 40 years and retired with a gold watch. But that’s a total myth. The truth is people in the 1960s and ’70s quit their jobs more often than they have in the past 20 years, and the economy was better off for it. Since the 1980s, Americans have quit less, and many have clung to crappy jobs for fear that the safety net wouldn’t support them while they looked for a new one. But Americans seem to be done with sticking it out. And they’re being rewarded for their lack of patience: Wages for low-income workers are rising at their fastest rate since the Great Recession. The Great Resignation is, literally, great.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ng/620382/

https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving- ... esignation

Employees between 30 and 45 years old have had the greatest increase in resignation rates, with an average increase of more than 20% between 2020 and 2021.

While resignations actually decreased slightly in industries such as manufacturing and finance, 3.6% more health care employees quit their jobs than in the previous year, and in tech, resignations increased by 4.5%.

I'm curious if anyone else is experiencing this in professional fields. Tech certainly is. We're losing people to companies that'll pay more AND let you work remote. Our organization is examining our flexible work policies and I hope we match what is being done at other banks and tech b/c we are certainly experiencing a "Great Resignation."

In government, we are too, but not to the extent as in the private sector. We still aren't competitive on wages, yet. However, we do offer excellent benefits, extremely generous time off, and I've been given the freedom to allow all of my employees to work remotely. I've only had one employee resign over the last two years and she left for another state agency who can pay more than I do with the same working conditions.

[89Hen]

COVID has been a blessing for my quality of life.

Me too. The car I bought two months ago was refueled for the first time last week. It's more of a paperweight than a vehicle right now.

[AZGrizFan]

We have 110 job openings right now, in a company of 1900. Can NOT fill them. We have people quitting who don't even have jobs lined up. I can't fathom that, but hey, you do you I guess. We just moved to a hybrid WFH workforce (have to, or it's a competitive disadvantage) and the last two employees I hired for the finance department are both remote (Colorado and Utah). It's the new "thing" and was probably on the way in anyways, just exacerbated by COVID. Which is ok, as long as the work gets done.

Customer service jobs (teller, MSR, call center rep, servers, front desk people, etc.)...these jobs are REALLY fucking difficult to fill right now. We've raised our minimum wage to $20/hr, and it really hasn't helped the hiring process.

[Ibanez]

My ten-person division just hired its first remote worker. She lives in Idaho. I'll likely never meet her in person. She makes about $25K less than a DC employee, being on the "Rest of US" locality scale, but her cost of living is likely cheaper to offset that a little.

Interestingly, if I chose to be reclassified as a remote teleworker after COVID, I'd have to change my "work address" from DC to my home in DE, and I'd take about a $5-10K cut moving to the Philly locality scale, which DE falls under. I won't do it though, because the Agency is already exploring a one day per week in the office policy once COVID is over. Nobody wants to return to the old gridlock days in DC. Ain't nobody got time for that.

So, when COVID passes, I'll be a DC-based employee teleworking four days per week. I can handle that. COVID has been a blessing for my quality of life.

I hear you. I was supposed to go back in the office, at my discretion, in September. I've been 3 times.

Now, they're looking at how to make things more flexible. But it's purely from a competitive perspective and not employee satisfaction. Doesn't matter too much - it's only me and the exec I support in Charlotte. The rest of my team is in either Chicago or Dallas.

My wife and I have talked about either building an addition/guesthouse or finishing up a few things on the house and looking to move to something with more space just in case I'm going to be remote from here on out. We've got a small 3bed room and we're using 1 room as an office.

[GannonFan]

Haven't seen it in my line of work yet, but manufacturing is a little more difficult to do remotely (we worked straight through the pandemic). Sales folks went remote and they'll stay that way as that makes sense. We're still having difficulty filling positions, especially shift positions. The pay is really good, great benefits, etc, but hard finding people with the skills and who want to work. Think we've had a maintenance position unfilled now for almost 12 months. Jobs in the lab are getting hard to fill too.

[Ivytalk]

We have 110 job openings right now, in a company of 1900. Can NOT fill them. We have people quitting who don't even have jobs lined up. I can't fathom that, but hey, you do you I guess. We just moved to a hybrid WTF workforce (have to, or it's a competitive disadvantage)

FYP

[andy7171]

People are supposed to come back to the office this Monday. MoCo is well into the yellow zone of covid infections so I'm imagining the in office mask mandate SHOULD be lifted as well. I never stopped coming into the office. So IDGAF. Co-workers are freaking out. Its laughable.
Lots of water cooler gossip incoming.

[Ivytalk]

Lots of water cooler gossip incoming.

“So, Joe, how about that Torson game?”

[GannonFan]

People are supposed to come back to the office this Monday. MoCo is well into the yellow zone of covid infections so I'm imagining the in office mask mandate SHOULD be lifted as well. I never stopped coming into the office. So IDGAF. Co-workers are freaking out. Its laughable.
Lots of water cooler gossip incoming.

Eh, be prepared for the "abundance of caution" and for mask mandates to remain. Even in a manufacturing site like mine, there's plenty of social distancing throughout the day, but we went back to mask wearing after a short 3-4 week window of not wearing them. No rise in cases, but the "abundance of caution".

[Ibanez]

We have 110 job openings right now, in a company of 1900. Can NOT fill them. We have people quitting who don't even have jobs lined up. I can't fathom that, but hey, you do you I guess. We just moved to a hybrid WFH workforce (have to, or it's a competitive disadvantage) and the last two employees I hired for the finance department are both remote (Colorado and Utah). It's the new "thing" and was probably on the way in anyways, just exacerbated by COVID. Which is ok, as long as the work gets done.

Customer service jobs (teller, MSR, call center rep, servers, front desk people, etc.)...these jobs are REALLY fucking difficult to fill right now. We've raised our minimum wage to $20/hr, and it really hasn't helped the hiring process.

We're moving to $21/hr this year and $25/hr by 2025. I'm not sure about the other areas but I know on the tech side, we've had a lot of people leaving ( to fill other tech vacancies) but have had trouble with attrition in general. Our original posture of everyone returning to office was stupid. We all said it was all 2020 and earlier this year but were rebuffed. WE have some new execs who are seeing the forest for the trees and are at least open to ideas.

[Pwns]

My cousin is in supply chain management and has told me the irate calls people have to deal with are just UNREAL and they've even gotten police involved multiple times. It's a self-perpetuating cycle because labor shortages causes things to slow down, which produces irate customers, which causes people to quit and leads to more labor shortages.

I will say too that tele-work should've normalized many years ago. I'm so sick of people out there that think me and other millenials want to live in large cities because we can't bear not being near a Starbucks or not having lots of Tinder matches. Horse****. Where do you think most of the jobs for college-educated people are? The crowded, expensive craphole large cities can't start hemorrhaging people fast enough for me.

[SuperHornet]

Having experienced unemployment (and exacerbated by the ineptitude of EDD), my only conclusion is that no matter how bad the situation, one does NOT resign in order to step out into nothing. I will only resign if I have an accepted offer in hand. For me, resigning in order to step out into nothing is just dumb....

[kalm]

My cousin is in supply chain management and has told me the irate calls people have to deal with are just UNREAL and they've even gotten police involved multiple times. It's a self-perpetuating cycle because labor shortages causes things to slow down, which produces irate customers, which causes people to quit and leads to more labor shortages.

I will say too that tele-work should've normalized many years ago. I'm so sick of people out there that think me and other millenials want to live in large cities because we can't bear not being near a Starbucks or not having lots of Tinder matches. Horse****. Where do you think most of the jobs for college-educated people are? The crowded, expensive craphole large cities can't start hemorrhaging people fast enough for me.

Wouldn’t you want them to stay there?

In reply to the OP, I have a friend who is in a workforce type company. He just texted me that he’s looking for 3 laborers for entry level carpentry apprenticeship or construction cleanup. 2 are full time possible 1 year gigs. $20-$44 an hour.

[JohnStOnge]

As I wrote in the spring, quitting is a concept typically associated with losers and loafers. But this level of quitting is really an expression of optimism that says, We can do better. You may have heard the story that in the golden age of American labor, 20th-century workers stayed in one job for 40 years and retired with a gold watch. But that’s a total myth. The truth is people in the 1960s and ’70s quit their jobs more often than they have in the past 20 years, and the economy was better off for it. Since the 1980s, Americans have quit less, and many have clung to crappy jobs for fear that the safety net wouldn’t support them while they looked for a new one. But Americans seem to be done with sticking it out. And they’re being rewarded for their lack of patience: Wages for low-income workers are rising at their fastest rate since the Great Recession. The Great Resignation is, literally, great.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ng/620382/

https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving- ... esignation

Employees between 30 and 45 years old have had the greatest increase in resignation rates, with an average increase of more than 20% between 2020 and 2021.

While resignations actually decreased slightly in industries such as manufacturing and finance, 3.6% more health care employees quit their jobs than in the previous year, and in tech, resignations increased by 4.5%.

I'm curious if anyone else is experiencing this in professional fields. Tech certainly is. We're losing people to companies that'll pay more AND let you work remote. Our organization is examining our flexible work policies and I hope we match what is being done at other banks and tech b/c we are certainly experiencing a "Great Resignation."

I dunno. My employer was letting me work 4 days per week from home before the pandemic. Most of the time, when I wasn't working from home, I was working in the field. Out in a boat or something like that. It works fine by the way. I realize that there are some jobs that require that people actually "go" to work. Like if you work in a hospital...well...you know. But I think there are an awful lot of jobs in today's world such that people really can work from home almost all of the time.

I think there is kind of a cultural thing with some people who think it is "necessary" to have people together in the office. But I think that is more and more becoming an obsolete mindset.

[Gil Dobie]

We are still remote, so haven't lost many people to other companies. Mostly moving up the ladder here.

[HI54UNI]

The next month or so will be interesting and how the vaccine mandate is treated. A large power company we work with has 1200 employees and only half are vaccinated. about 2/3 that aren't vaxed are linemen, power plant workers, and other skilled trades. What happens if they start to quit? How do they keep the lights on? I was talking to a guy that works for a cellular company and most of their techs are unvaxed. Who's going to blink first?

[AZGrizFan]

The next month or so will be interesting and how the vaccine mandate is treated. A large power company we work with has 1200 employees and only half are vaccinated. about 2/3 that aren't vaxed are linemen, power plant workers, and other skilled trades. What happens if they start to quit? How do they keep the lights on? I was talking to a guy that works for a cellular company and most of their techs are unvaxed. Who's going to blink first?

I hope to god it’s the companies/Feds. Seeing cops, firemen, and healthcare workers being cut loose because they won’t get vaccinated is just such a retarded response to a manufactured crisis that it boggles the mind. Airline employees, truckers and a couple other industries pushed back and they won…hopefully that has emboldened some other larger industries.

[Ibanez]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ng/620382/

https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving- ... esignation



I'm curious if anyone else is experiencing this in professional fields. Tech certainly is. We're losing people to companies that'll pay more AND let you work remote. Our organization is examining our flexible work policies and I hope we match what is being done at other banks and tech b/c we are certainly experiencing a "Great Resignation."

I dunno. My employer was letting me work 4 days per week from home before the pandemic. Most of the time, when I wasn't working from home, I was working in the field. Out in a boat or something like that. It works fine by the way. I realize that there are some jobs that require that people actually "go" to work. Like if you work in a hospital...well...you know. But I think there are an awful lot of jobs in today's world such that people really can work from home almost all of the time.

I think there is kind of a cultural thing with some people who think it is "necessary" to have people together in the office. But I think that is more and more becoming an obsolete mindset.

The other side is that there are billions (probably trillions) in real estate and leases being wasted at this point in time and a strict Return to Office is an attempt to justify those. Ideally - companies will realize that a hybrid system might work better, reduce their footprint (which won't pass those savings onto employees by way of higher salaries) and have a happier workforce. My developers have to be in the office, in a development lab. But for me, who spends 4-6 hours a day in meetings, I'm better off home where i'm comfortable.

[JohnStOnge]

The next month or so will be interesting and how the vaccine mandate is treated. A large power company we work with has 1200 employees and only half are vaccinated. about 2/3 that aren't vaxed are linemen, power plant workers, and other skilled trades. What happens if they start to quit? How do they keep the lights on? I was talking to a guy that works for a cellular company and most of their techs are unvaxed. Who's going to blink first?

I hope to god it’s the companies/Feds. Seeing cops, firemen, and healthcare workers being cut loose because they won’t get vaccinated is just such a retarded response to a manufactured crisis that it boggles the mind. Airline employees, truckers and a couple other industries pushed back and they won…hopefully that has emboldened some other larger industries.

Does that mean you think COVID-19 is a "manufactured crisis?"

[AZGrizFan]

I hope to god it’s the companies/Feds. Seeing cops, firemen, and healthcare workers being cut loose because they won’t get vaccinated is just such a retarded response to a manufactured crisis that it boggles the mind. Airline employees, truckers and a couple other industries pushed back and they won…hopefully that has emboldened some other larger industries.

Does that mean you think COVID-19 is a "manufactured crisis?"

I think the economic crisis that the government created was manufactured unnecessarily, yes. I think I’ve been pretty clear and consistent on that point.

[SDHornet]

The next month or so will be interesting and how the vaccine mandate is treated. A large power company we work with has 1200 employees and only half are vaccinated. about 2/3 that aren't vaxed are linemen, power plant workers, and other skilled trades. What happens if they start to quit? How do they keep the lights on? I was talking to a guy that works for a cellular company and most of their techs are unvaxed. Who's going to blink first?

I hope to god it’s the companies/Feds. Seeing cops, firemen, and healthcare workers being cut loose because they won’t get vaccinated is just such a retarded response to a manufactured crisis that it boggles the mind. Airline employees, truckers and a couple other industries pushed back and they won…hopefully that has emboldened some other larger industries.

The blueprint on how to defeat the vax mandates has been set. The people hold the power, and this exposes that even more. Saw a headline that businesses are lobbying mandates to not be implemented until after Christmas.

I have no idea what our agency's vax rate is, but I bet it's not much better than half for our field workers (mechanics, electricians, control techs), and probably about 90% for the white collar workers...of course the pandemic showed how little value the white collar workers are, so there's that. We lose most of our field staff and we'll have a legit public health crisis on our hands.

[SDHornet]

Does that mean you think COVID-19 is a "manufactured crisis?"

I think the economic crisis that the government created was manufactured unnecessarily, yes. I think I’ve been pretty clear and consistent on that point.

And anyone with a brain can see that...remember the whole "essential workers" nonsense. There was never a clear reason as to what made one job "essential" and others "nonessential". The whole thing was total bull shit.

Oh, and now some of those "essential" workers are getting fired for not getting the vax. Go figure.

[Winterborn]

We have had a few people leave for better offers and it has been much more difficult to hire for certain positions. Good thing that has come out of it is it has caused HR to look over benefits and salary comparisons. Salaries and benefits are slowing becoming disassociated from the job location. For the jobs I have held in the past salary was adjusted off of national norms based on Cost of Living. Some of that adjustment I am fine with but my experience it has been used more as a stick against an employee who wants to stay in an area.

Work has been much more proactive in upping benefits and salary then they have been in the past. I have had two such adjustments in the 18 months as engineering has traditionally lagged a bit. I have also been head-hunted more in the past 6 months than the past few years. Definitely a employee market.