The New Labor Market February 4 2022

The New Labor Market
By: Holly Rosenkrantz
Pub. Date: February 4, 2022

Access Date: October 17, 2022
Source URL: https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2022020400
©2022 CQ Press, An Imprint of SAGE Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
CQ Press is a registered trademark of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Table of Contents
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Introduction
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Overview
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Background ....................
. . . . . . . Situation
Current . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
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Outlook ....................
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Pro/Con ....................
. . . . . . . . . . .Questions
Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
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Chronology ....................
. . . . . .Features
Short . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
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Bibliography ....................
. . . . Next
The . . . . .Step
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Contacts ....................
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Footnotes ....................
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About . . . Author
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CQ Researcher
Introduction
The U.S. labor market has been transformed by a phenomenon known as the “Great Resignation.” Workers are quitting at rates not seen in
decades, employers are struggling to fill job openings and workplace strikes are on the rise. A record 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in
November. Some are leaving the workforce altogether, while others are moving to different jobs, starting their own business or taking on contract
work. A variety of factors are believed to have created this trend: greater personal savings, worker discontent, and fallout from COVID-19. In some
cases, COVID has caused people to rethink their priorities and career goals. In other cases, millions of people may be suffering from disabilities
due to long COVID, making them unable or unwilling to work. The question is whether this trend is temporary — or a permanent alteration of the
workforce.
Businesses facing staffing vacancies, such as this McDonald's restaurant in

Miami Beach, Fla., hope to lure workers with better pay and other perks.
Experts wonder whether the recent increase in workers quitting their jobs is
temporary, or a permanent realignment. (Getty Images/Universal Images
Group/Jeffrey Greenberg)
Overview
“Never told a boss off like this. And it felt amazing.”
That was the heading on the Reddit forum called r/antiwork, an online chat group where people share their “Take This Job and Shove It” stories. In
recent weeks, the forum has gone viral, and it has plenty of online company.1 Text messages between “I've-had-it-up-to-here” employees and “evil”
bosses have dominated social media, as have #iquitmyjob Twitter threads and a phenomenon known as QuitTok.2
The postings echo a broader and somewhat unexpected theme in today's pandemic labor market: workers are no longer tolerating unfavorable
working conditions.
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CQ Researcher
Construction workers, like these laborers pouring concrete for a new viaduct in
Los Angeles last month, are in high demand because of employee shortages.
The industry currently has almost 350,000 vacant jobs. (AFP/Getty
Images/Frederic J. Brown)
Companies and policymakers are responding. Some lawmakers in Congress are endorsing a bill called the Thirty-Two-Hour Workweek Act, a
measure that would allow hourly-wage workers to potentially earn more overtime pay.3 At the same time, some employers are taking the initiative.
For example, a California-based tech company called Bolt has already made a four-day workweek a permanent benefit for their employees.4
“Right now, power is leaning more toward workers in the labor market,” says Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, one of the top online job
search sites. “Workers have more leverage than they have had for quite a long time.”
At the start of 2021, 40 percent of all employees said they were thinking about leaving their jobs.5 As the year progressed, many did more than just
think about it. More than 20 million people quit their jobs in the second half of 2021, and this massive churn has led to a changing power dynamic
between workers and bosses.6 Many experts believe the U.S. labor market has been transformed by a phenomenon that has become known as
“The Great Resignation” or “The Big Quit.”
For almost a year now, workers have been quitting their jobs at rates that have not been seen in decades. Employers are struggling to fill
openings, and strikes are on the rise. Experts believe a variety of factors has created this trend: greater personal savings, worker discontent and
fallout from COVID-19. In some cases, the pandemic has caused people to rethink their priorities, career ambitions and goals.7 In other cases,
millions of people may be suffering from disabilities due to long COVID, making them unable and unwilling to work.8
The question for economy watchers is whether this trend is temporary or a permanent alteration of the labor force. The Great Resignation
appeared to slow down in October, but then surged in November, reaching the highest level ever recorded since the government began tracking
such data two decades ago. The number of workers quitting then fell slightly in December.9
“There's a short-term story of what's happening post-COVID,” says Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist and co-chair of the Center on Wage and
Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley. “But it's couched in the long-term story of what has happened over the last 40
years. People are saying enough is enough.”10
The trend emerged last spring. In April 2021, 4 million Americans quit their jobs, a record at the time.11 Even more quit in July. The record was
broken again in August, in September (4.4 million) and again in November (4.5 million).12 Some are leaving the workforce altogether, while others
are moving on to different jobs, starting businesses or taking contract work.13
In addition, labor experts dubbed October as “Striketober,” and that blended into “Strikesgiving.” Some 25,000 workers, from nurses to factory
employees, walked off their jobs and onto picket lines in October.14
Among the higher-profile strikers were 10,000 John Deere workers and 1,400 Kellogg employees seeking higher wages, better benefits and a
stronger pension plan at a time that their companies were enjoying record profits. The John Deere strike ended with an agreement to boost wages
over a six-year period. Kellogg workers ended their strike after 77 days with a new collective bargaining agreement.15
And after decades of stalled unionization efforts in the workplace, labor organizing may be gaining momentum. Starbucks workers in Buffalo in
December formed the coffee chain's first union at a corporate store, and workers at cafes in a dozen other areas have filed petitions to unionize.16
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CQ Researcher
Starbucks employees in Buffalo, N.Y., await the results of an election on Dec. 9,

in which they voted to form the chain's first union at a corporate store. The
“Great Resignation” has given momentum to labor organizing efforts, which had
stalled in recent decades. (AFP/Getty Images/Eleonore Sens)
Experts expect this trend to continue. “Labor market leverage and the fact that workers have been through incredibly difficult working conditions
over the past year and a half with the pandemic are combining to explain a lot of this labor activism now,” said Johnnie Kallas, a Ph.D. student who
is project director of Cornell University's ILR Labor Action Tracker.17
David Pryzbylski, a labor and employment attorney at Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Indianapolis who represents management, has a different take
on the recent moves to organize. He notes that U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers show private sector unionization in 2021 dipped to a
record low of 6.1 percent of all such workers from 6.3 percent the previous year. Still, he says, increased activity around organizing and strikes has
raised concerns among companies.
“Employers definitely have their guard up,” Pryzbylski says. “They are looking for things to strengthen the atmosphere through incentives, and
evaluating their perks and company culture. If employees feel they are valued, then they won't want to unionize or seek changes.”
The overall quit rate is measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has been tracking this metric since 2000. Every month, the agency
releases its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, known as JOLTS.18 Data have shown that resignations are rising in nearly all industries.
And this is happening as wages are rising — pay levels for low-income workers are increasing faster than at any time since the Great Recession of
2007-09.19
The increase in wages is a signal of a significant shift in the power dynamic between workers and employers, say many economists and other
experts. “Companies are going to have to work harder to attract and retain talent,” said Karen Fichuk, chief executive of the staffing company
Randstad North America. “We think it's a bit of a historic moment for the American labor force.”20
A Texas A&M management professor named Anthony Klotz may have coined the term that now is identified with the trend. In May 2021, he forecast
a massive workplace exodus. “The great resignation is coming,” he said at the time. “When there's uncertainty, people tend to stay put, so there
are pent-up resignations that didn't happen over the past year.”21
Klotz said the quit numbers were accelerating because so many people were experiencing pandemic-related epiphanies about family time, remote
work, commuting, passion projects, life and death. This was especially the case in the United States where people work more hours than they do in
other industrialized countries, according to data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.22
But before the quit rate began to rise, the first year of the pandemic was characterized by labor market patterns that would be expected during a
severe global disruption. In March and April 2020, as COVID took hold in the United States and caused widespread business shutdowns, a
combined 22.3 million workers were laid off, a record. The quit rate in April dropped to a seven-year low of 1.6 percent of the total workforce.23
The layoffs hit especially hard among women, who disproportionately worked in sectors most affected by the lockdowns, such as services
industries and childcare.24
“Massive job losses during the pandemic were followed by a faster than expected recovery,” says Julia Pollak, chief economist at the ZipRecruiter
job search site. “That led to brisk growth in job openings, at a time when millions had left the labor force. The workers and job seekers who
remained are now faced with 50 percent more job openings than before the pandemic, offering higher pay, more benefits and greater flexibility.
That is making this a Golden Age for people looking to switch jobs.”
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CQ Researcher
In fact, a November report by the World Economic Forum found that many U.S. workers are no longer willing to put up with the pay or working
conditions they accepted, perhaps grudgingly, before the pandemic. “Companies now have to navigate the ripple effects of the pandemic and re-
evaluate how to retain talent,” the group wrote.25
Economists believe high quit rates show that workers are confident they can find higher-paying jobs. That kind of confidence historically has come
with high economic stability, vigorous levels of people working and low unemployment rates.
During periods of high unemployment, resignation rates usually drop along with hire rates. During the Great Recession, the U.S. quit rate fell to 1.2
percent in August 2009 from 2 percent before the recession and the hire rate dropped to 2.8 percent from 3.7 percent.26 And in the 20 years
before February 2021, the U.S. quit rate never exceeded 2.4 percent.27
Quits are considered procyclical; they are expected to fall during recessions and rise during expansions. The higher quit rates in the beginning of
the economic recovery in April 2020, therefore, made sense. But more recently, quit rates are even higher than before the pandemic.
The Great Resignation is having far-reaching impacts on a variety of industries. Workers in relatively low-paying fields such as hospitality and high-
pressure jobs such as health care have moved on to other sectors. The education field is facing the same pressures, as many school-related jobs
are both high-pressure and low-pay. Schools are currently bleeding teachers, bus drivers, nurses and other crucial staff. Women, who tend to
dominate these jobs, have been disproportionately represented among those quitting their jobs.28
Currently, 4.4 percent of all positions in education are open, over 6 percent in retail and more than 8 percent in health care. Open jobs in hotels
and restaurants are nearly 9 percent. The construction industry has almost 350,000 open positions. Two sectors, hospitality and food services and
retail trades, accounted for more than one-third of all quits in November. Total vacant positions number almost 1.5 million.29
As economists, policymakers, business owners and employees watch these trends to see if they will become permanent, here are some of the
issues they are discussing:
Is the Big Quit a temporary phenomenon?
Since the pandemic is not expected to end anytime soon, labor experts believe the pressures tied to COVID — closed and remote schools, a lack
of childcare, increased illnesses and the need for isolation — will continue to lead to a flurry of resignations. With Omicron and other potential
variants keeping people home longer, confidence is waning that the pandemic is in the rearview mirror.
“This is not a phenomenon that will resolve itself in a few months,” says Liz Wilke, principal economist at Gusto, a company that services payroll,
benefits and human resources (HR) for small businesses. “COVID is an ongoing phenomenon, which will continue to push and pull people in and
out of the labor market as risks fluctuate. That uncertainty will hinder progress back to ‘normal.’”
In addition, “the tightness of the labor market seems only to be increasing,” she says. “Many workers are shifting to self-employment through
entrepreneurship and independent contracting and have transitioned out of old lines of work and into new areas.”
Pollak, of ZipRecruiter, sees the Great Resignation lasting “well over a year.” In fact, a January survey by ResumeBuilder.com, an online resume
creation tool, concluded that one in four employed Americans plan to quit their jobs this year. The survey found that turnover will be highest among
workers in the sectors of retail, food and hospitality, education, and office and administrative support.30
To Klotz, the Texas A&M professor, the longevity of the trend will depend on how durable companies make their newer, employee-friendly benefits.
If it is “unclear whether these options will be permanent,” he said, it will be “difficult for employees to decide whether to stay or go.”31
Ultimately, though, some labor experts say some of the more fundamental reassessments of the nature and importance of work will linger once the
pandemic's effects on the market wane.
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CQ Researcher
“For many, there has been a reckoning in which people ask themselves if they have been doing work that goes against their values,” says Ben
Jackson, founder of Hear Me Out, an HR strategy company. “Particularly in tech and finance, people are seeking more of a mission.”
Labor analysts say the United States has historically been less responsive to the needs of workers, and more pro-business, than other
industrialized nations. This country has been called a “no-vacation nation” because it offers much less time off than in similar countries.32
An employee of Enterprise Rent-A-Car checks in a returned vehicle in

Washington, D.C., in 2017. Enterprise is one of four companies identified by an
MIT study as having a lower quit rate than other businesses because of a
reputation for a healthy work environment. (Getty Images/Universal Images
Group/Jeffrey Greenberg)
Some labor watchers say that companies with healthy workplace cultures are seeing fewer resignations. According to an analysis published by the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan Management Review, Southwest Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, Enterprise Rent-a-Car and
LinkedIn experienced lower quit rates than other companies in the period from April to September 2021. All four companies enjoy reputations for
maintaining a healthy workplace environment, the Sloan article said.33
“A toxic corporate culture is by far the strongest predictor of industry-adjusted attrition and is 10 times more important than compensation in
predicting turnover,” the article said.34
But some analysts say the labor market shuffling will eventually slow along with the pandemic.
“We believe that this resignation dynamic is mostly a symptom of other underlying forces that are affecting labor market participation, rather than a
cause,” Jonathan Millar, deputy chief U.S. economist for Barclays bank, wrote in a November analysis.35
“The high quit rate is a red herring for understanding the sluggish return of workers to the U.S. labor market following the COVID-19 pandemic,” he
wrote. “Instead, the true cause is a hesitation of workers to return to the labor force, due to influences tied to the pandemic such as infection risks,
infection-related illness, and a lack of affordable childcare.”36
In addition, some labor analysts say the quitting that is tied to the current competitiveness of the labor market might be temporary. “Things are
looking pretty tight given the available supply of labor that we have right now,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a
liberal think tank. “But there are millions on the sidelines who will come in, once the labor supply-suppressing effects of Covid are in the rearview
mirror.”37
One downside of a high quit rate, says Jessica Rabe, co-founder of DataTrek, a business research firm, is that high job openings could lead to
rising wages — and then to inflationary pressures that could ultimately encourage employers to turn to automation.
“With this backdrop, we expect continued growth in automating roles both to take the place of workers companies cannot find and to offset rising
wage pressures,” Rabe wrote in a November report. “This will be an important trend to watch as it will shape labor markets over the long-term given
that automation, once installed, is simply never reversed.”38
Gregory Daco, chief economist at the global consulting firm EY-Parthenon, agrees. He says that even though the Great Resignation “may last a
while, it is transitory in nature.”
“It is misleading to think that people are simply resigning,” he says. “Much of this is a great reset or a great renegotiation. People are getting new
jobs, perhaps with higher pay or better benefits, but eventually that will cycle through.”
Did pandemic rescue measures exacerbate the worker shortage?
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CQ Researcher
Pollak, of ZipRecruiter, notes that the unemployment supports that the United States put in place when the pandemic first hit could be viewed as
exacerbating the worker shortage.
After employment growth failed to meet expectations over the summer, some analysts speculated that the additional $300 weekly unemployment
insurance payments provided as part of pandemic relief, on top of regular jobless benefits, were keeping workers on the sidelines.
“We allowed millions of people to get laid off and then had them apply individually for unemployment benefits — benefits which, in many cases,
exceeded their prior earnings,” Pollak says.
In Germany, by contrast, the government subsidized companies’ payrolls so workers could stay on and receive 60 percent to 80 percent of their
prior earnings from their employers, preserving the relationship between employers and employees, Pollak says.39
“Our swift and generous COVID relief and stimulus measures were crucial to the economic recovery,” Pollak says. “But arguably the way they were
designed caused greater disruption and detachment from the labor force than was necessary.”
Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, an online job search site, says past research has shown that generous unemployment benefits have
increased worker shortages. But the benefits given during this pandemic “were not enough to explain the major labor shortages we are seeing,” he
says. “And most of these benefits have wound down or expired.”
Gusto's Wilke, though, says her firm's research shows that these benefits did not materially impact the availability of labor, as states that ended
unemployment benefits sooner did not see stronger increases in headcount than those that kept them in place for longer. “Among states with
extended … benefits, teen hiring increased relative to prime-age hiring,” she says.
With most state and federal initiatives to expand jobless benefits having expired since the summer, it is difficult to conclusively link those measures
to the current historically high levels of worker shortage, Wilke says. “If what happened during the summer is any indication, it's unlikely they are
driving the worker shortage and it's more likely concerns over COVID, childcare issues, desire for better pay and flexibility are the bigger
contributing factors,” she says.
Indeed, workers who voluntarily quit their jobs generally are not eligible for unemployment benefits. There are some exceptions for workers who
may have good cause to quit, and states can interpret these rules differently.40 One example: Workers who leave a job because of unsafe work
conditions or “constructive discharge” — if an employer essentially forces an employee to quit — may qualify for benefits.41
Daco, the EY-Parthenon economist, says that while labor watchers at one point thought enhanced unemployment benefits were a “big reason” why
people were not returning to the workforce, the higher benefits ultimately turned out to have a “fairly marginal effect on the labor market.”
“Half of the states ended enhanced benefits early, and we did not see a surge in people returning to the workforce,” he says.
Kathryn Edwards, an economist at the RAND Corp. policy think tank, said the belief that enhanced unemployment benefits kept people out of the
workforce misunderstands the complicated dynamics of the labor market.
“Some business leaders and policymakers appear to believe that this complex labor shortage will relent once workers start to feel a financial pinch,”
she said. “With that in mind, about half of governors cut off enhanced unemployment benefits early. But there was no corresponding jump in jobs in
those states over the summer, nor when the extra benefits ended nationwide in September. Still, everyone from White House economic advisers to
recruiting-firm executives keeps predicting that more workers will appear once they have depleted their savings.”42
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CQ Researcher
Edwards also noted that, historically in the United States, the biggest safety net has never been government supports or rescue measures, but
rather people's own families. “Parents, children, siblings and spouses extend the financial security and capability of any one person,” she said.
“During the pandemic, job seekers have cited their working spouse as a reason they are not searching harder for jobs.”43
And for all the complaints about excessive pandemic-era rescue measures having a depressive impact on the labor market, Edwards noted that the
United States did not provide key supports that would encourage people to re-enter the workforce. About a quarter of U.S. private-sector workers
do not have paid sick leave, and some 20 percent of workers are given their schedule less than a week in advance.44 In addition, the United States
has not adopted the kind of supports that are believed to increase workforce participation in other countries, such as paid family leave, large
childcare subsidies, or the right to request a move to part-time work without risking the loss of one's job.45
“It is important to stress that the pandemic rescue measures prevented this economy from spiraling into a depression,” Edwards says. “It prevented
the spread of financial catastrophe, with 15 percent of all jobs disappearing a month.”
Will pandemic-era workers’ benefits and protections become permanent?
At the start of the pandemic, some companies turned to temporary measures, such as signing bonuses or “hazard pay,” to address staffing
shortages. In many cases, says ZipRecruiter's Pollak, short-term moves weren't enough to solve the problem.
“Companies had to make changes to their pay scales and benefits packages, and adopt new and more flexible scheduling practices and remote
and hybrid models,” she says. “These changes will be much harder to peel back. They're here to stay.”
For retailers, a key way to attract and keep workers is to increase wages in incremental amounts, raising pay to $15 an hour, then $16, $17 and
$20. That raised expectations that wages would remain high, according to experts.
“The pandemic has caused major shifts in the expected relationship between workers and employers,” says Wilke, the Gusto economist. “Some of
these shifts are likely to remain, such as increased availability of remote and hybrid work, and flexible work hours and schedules for many workers”
who can do their jobs remotely. “Employees across the board expect more support for emotional and psychological well-being from their employers,
and this trend will likely remain in some form,” she says.
To Jackson, the HR strategy firm founder, the era of bosses demanding that their workers come into the office all the time is essentially over. “I
believe it will be increasingly difficult to get workers into the office full time without a significant increase in salary or without paying them a
premium,” he says. “Anecdotally, we have heard that premium is about 20 percent, particularly on Wall Street.”
He adds, “Now that we have seen we can work from home all the time, I believe a lot of workers will be questioning what other things we take for
granted.”
But RAND Corp.'s Edwards predicts that the only pandemic benefits likely to remain are the ones that affect workers who are already the most
privileged. “The higher-earning workers are the ones who are likely to wind up with the best long-term benefits,” she says. “It all comes down to
bargaining power.”
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CQ Researcher
For example, grocery workers have blasted the lack of hazard pay given to them during the recent Omicron wave of the pandemic. Many of the
nation's largest retailers — including Amazon, Kroger and Rite Aid — scrapped the extra money they were giving their workers as their other
pandemic-related costs rose last year.46 That extra pay was not restored as the Omicron variant surged in late 2021. Companies have expressed
appreciation for their employees’ commitment to serve their customers, but say the variant has put a new financial strain on their businesses. They
also say they are offering other financial perks to their employees.47
“While the hazards of COVID-19 are growing worse, few frontline essential workers are receiving any hazard pay at all,” three researchers at the
Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank, wrote in October 2020. “Most large retail employers ended temporary pay bumps months ago, despite
many companies earning record sales, eye-popping profits, and soaring stock prices.” And Congress failed to adopt a hazard pay proposal last
year. “Innovative hazard pay initiatives by state governments have been among the few bright spots, but the scale of these efforts is small
compared to the need,” they wrote.48 One example of such a government initiative: In Seattle, Kroger has been required to pay grocery employees
an extra $4 an hour.49
EY-Parthenon's Daco agrees. “Businesses always have to consider their bottom line in their workforce calculations,” he says. “I would not expect
[low-wage] workers to have permanently high bargaining power.”
Labor experts note that low-wage workers in particular tend to lack a benefit that is crucial during a pandemic — paid sick leave. CVS, Walgreens,
Amazon, Kroger and Walmart are among the companies that are limiting paid time off for employees with COVID-19.50
Companies are defending this trend by saying they are basing their decisions on recent guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) that has cut the amount of time people with COVID-19 need to self-isolate. “In line with changes to CDC guidance, we are
currently providing five days of paid leave for eligible full- and part-time colleagues, except where state or city paid leave laws provide for more,” a
CVS spokeswoman told Fortune magazine.51
About half of U.S. hourly workers report having access to paid sick leave at their jobs, according to a report from the Shift Project of Harvard's
Kennedy School, which surveyed U.S. workers in the fall of 2021. About 45 percent of those who contracted COVID reported having paid sick
leave.52
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed by Congress in 2020, provided up to two weeks of paid sick leave for workers infected with
COVID-19. That federal mandate, though, was in effect only during 2020 and was limited to employers with fewer than 500 employees.
But with the labor market shift toward increased worker power, grocery workers are pushing back to demand better benefits. In January, unionized
Kroger workers in Denver walked off the job after a fight with the company over hazard pay.53 The 10-day strike ended with an agreement that will
improve wages and benefits.54
Ultimately, though, some labor experts believe that any pandemic-era benefit or pay increase is not likely to have a dramatic impact on the overall
market.
“There is no magic bullet,” Glassdoor's Zhao says. “It is hard to imagine what will unleash the floodgates of labor force participation. It is not
something that will be unlocked with one policy change. The largest factor holding back labor force participation is the pandemic. The pandemic
itself is what has to get under control.”
Background
Early Precedents
There are several factors driving the current wave of resignations, such as high employment and increased worker malaise related to the
pandemic. Historians note precedents for both of these factors in earlier eras. During the Civil War, for example, formerly enslaved people and
other workers were switching jobs frequently due to the availability of employment opportunities in a wartime economy, says Nelson Lichtenstein, a
labor historian and director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“Times of really high employment and labor shortage do produce very large degrees of job switching and even migration to better work,” he says.
And while worker malaise dates back as far as back there has been work, the modern power dynamics that have defined the workplace relationship
between bosses and employees really began at the turn of the 20th century, when factory jobs began to make up a greater share of the labor
market and farming a smaller share.
Between 1870 and 1929, U.S. industrial output increased 14 times, creating a giant demand for immigrants and others with skills to sustain the
swelling economy. By the 1880s, most American industrial workers put in 14-hour days, six days a week, without sick pay or overtime.55 Children as
young as 8 worked in coal mines and factories, which meant they were precluded from going to school. They often developed health problems
associated with older people.
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In the early 20th century, children often labored in factories, such as these
boys working in a Georgia textile mill in 1909. The boys were so small that they
had to climb up on the spinning frame to mend broken threads and put back
the empty bobbins. (Getty Images/Photo12/Universal Images Group)
The period in the late 1800s known as the Gilded Age gave rise to a widening income gap and a pressure for workers to produce. Millionaire
employers such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and J.P. Morgan lived lives that were vastly different from the
majority of Americans. For most workers, wages were barely enough to survive. Adults worked until they were ill, with no retirement benefits or
medical coverage. Women workers who became pregnant were fired, and there was no compensation for being injured on the job.56
But workers became unwilling to accept the way big businesses were being run, and they began organizing around specific skills and trades.
Employees grew to realize that while they did not have money or political power, they had the numbers — there were more workers than there were
bosses. These groups later became the unions that birthed the American labor movement. Early unions represented the building trades,
transportation workers and coal miners.
The Depression and Labor
The Great Depression of the 1930s exacerbated tensions between workers and companies. With the economy in prolonged crisis, many Americans
lost faith in corporations, and unions launched a new wave of demands. Union organizing by then was a vibrant part of the work world, and the
government began to regulate the process. In 1935, the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced Congress to pass the landmark National
Labor Relations Act, which created the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to organize the type of union representation elections still held
today: government-supervised secret-ballot votes that employees hold at work. (Many labor advocates today cite this statute and type of elections
as examples of how the U.S. labor-law regime is not designed for the current workforce, with its abundance of gig workers across a wide range of
industries.)57
The law was followed in 1938 by the Fair Labor Standards Act, a crucial piece of legislation that banned children under 14 from working and those
under 18 from hazardous jobs in mining and factories. It also limited the work week for everyone to 44 hours — later reduced to 40 — and
established the first minimum wage, 25 cents an hour (roughly $4.59 in today's dollar).58
Meanwhile, strikes became important tools to win gains for workers. In December 1936, one of the first sit-down strikes — in which workers took
control of their workplace, preventing management from replacing them with others — occurred at a General Motors plant in Flint, Mich. The
autoworkers sought to establish the United Auto Workers (UAW) as the only bargaining agent for GM employees. After 44 days, workers won that
recognition, as well as a pay raise and other concessions.59
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Employees at a General Motors plant in Flint, Mich., in December 1936 staged

a sit-down strike, seeking the right to unionize. The workers took over the
factory to prevent management from bringing in replacements and won the
strike after 44 days. (Getty Images/Bettmann/Contributor)
In the years immediately following the end of World War II in 1945, several massive strikes against the automobile, steel and meatpacking
industries, among others, angered business and conservative groups and led to passage of the Taft-Hartley Act by a Republican-controlled
Congress in 1947. It sharply limited strikes and empowered states to enact right-to-work laws, which prevent workers from being forced to join a
union to keep their job.60
During this period, workers did not really protest by quitting; they went on strike or demanded better pay, working conditions and benefits.
Between 1942 and 1945, when millions of men left to fight in World War II, up to 6 million women joined the workforce.61 In 1944, 50 percent of all
adult women were employed. The percentage of married women working outside the home increased from 13.9 percent to 22.5 percent.62
Labor historian Lichtenstein notes that high employment during and after the war led to a wave of high quits, something that could be seen as a
precursor to the current trend. “In World War II, fully one third of all American workers shifted jobs, far larger than today,” he says. “There was a
much bigger agricultural employment then, so much of this was from farm to urban work. Much higher pay could be found in the defense industry,
so people fled domestic labor and farming.”
In the immediate postwar years, an expanding economy and stability in corporate America encouraged many employees to stay with one company
for their entire working careers.
“In past decades, there was an unspoken contract that companies had with workers that implicitly guaranteed lifetime employment,” said Dorie
Clark, who teaches executive education at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and the Columbia Business School in New York and is the
author of a leadership book, Entrepreneurial You. 63
But some historians and analysts say that there was actually a great deal of labor market movement during that period of supposed stability. Labor
writer Derek Thompson, author of Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction, said there was a higher instance of people quitting their
jobs in the 1960s and ’70s than there has been in the past two decades, until quite recently. “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,” Thompson said. “But Americans
seem to be done with sticking it out.”64
Starting in the 1960s, factory jobs began to make up a smaller share of the workforce, and the labor market diversified.65 The United States had
become an economic superpower, fueled in part by a dynamic and diverse workforce that continually adapted to changing times. Professional
career paths among managerial, clerical, sales and service workers (except among those with private household service jobs) grew in the past
century from about a quarter of total U.S. employment to about three-quarters. The number of jobs for blue-collar workers such as laborers
(excluding miners), private household service workers and farm employees all declined.66
Burnout
In the 1970s, the term “burnout” made its way into popular culture. Bob Dylan's song “Shelter From the Storm,” recorded in 1974, mentions a list of
troubles: being “burned out from exhaustion” was one of them. “The mid-1970s was when burnout as we know it first gained scientific legitimacy
and broad public attention,” said Jonathan Malesic, author of The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives. 67
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Before that, the term burn-out was already circulating in psychological literature, according to Malesic. An official at a rehabilitation center for
young adult offenders in Southern California referred to it as a phenomenon among treatment staff in a 1969 paper, he said. Workers at the St.
Mark's Free Clinic in New York City used the term to describe themselves. They could have heard that term on the streets of the East Village,
where people used it to describe heroin users’ veins. In a 1980 book, New York psychologist Herbert Freudenberger likened “burn-outs” to burned-
out buildings.68
During this period, the labor movement gained a sensitivity to the issue of burnout. The movement, though, was split, generationally, about how to
— or whether — to address it. “A younger generation of union members wanted to fight against the fast pace and deadening repetition of work on
the lines,” Malesic said. “Their elders argued that they already had favorable contracts, so why did they want to agitate against boredom?”69
Still, Malesic noted that this internal debate within the labor movement signaled that it had some real power. That power, though, did not last.
“American manufacturing and organized labor drowned in a toxic brew of global competition, the ‘oil shock’ resulting from an OPEC embargo and
rapid inflation,” he said. “For the first time since World War II, workers’ productivity gains became detached from their wages.”70
1980s and Beyond
By the 1980s, burnout was a commonly used term. In fact, the president of the air traffic controllers union mentioned “early burnout” as the first
reason why his union members were striking in 1981 for higher wages and a shorter workweek.71
That air traffic controllers strike is viewed by labor historians as a seminal event in the decline of the union movement in the United States. More
than 11,000 members of this union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, went on strike to demand a raise and better working
conditions. In a show of raw power, President Ronald Reagan fired and permanently replaced them.
Air traffic controllers went on strike in 1981, citing worker burnout in the high-
stress job. President Ronald Reagan fired and replaced them, leading one
striker to dress in a prison outfit in protest. Some view the strike as a key
moment in the decline of the American union movement. (Getty
Images/Bettmann/Contributor)
“Reagan's decision sent a message that workers still hear today: They will deal with burnout on their own, or not at all,” Malesic said.72
Meanwhile, the trend of high quits during high employment continued. During the economic boom of the late 1990s, unemployment dropped below
4 percent, and neither big-box stores nor Silicon Valley could stop workers from jumping to a better job, historian Lichtenstein said.73
“During the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the U.S. economy was strong, which created many new jobs and opportunities for
workers,” Jay Zagorsky, a research scientist at Ohio State University, said in a report for the World Economic Forum. “These are typical precursors
to more people quitting their current jobs in search of better pay and benefits. Given that the [quits] rate was 2.4 percent in January 2001,” one
month after the government began compiling data on workers quitting their jobs, “it's not a stretch to imagine it may have been higher than the
current level at some point in 2000 or earlier.”74
A central event in the 21st century labor market was the Great Recession, spurred by the financial crisis that started in 2007. It was the most
severe economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate doubled to about 10 percent.75
The economy recovered during the Obama and Trump administrations and millions of new jobs were created. That trend ended suddenly with the
COVID-19 pandemic that hit the U.S. in 2020, leading to massive layoffs. The U.S. declared a national emergency in March 2020 and
unemployment rose by 1.5 million that month. The surge of job losses was short-lived, however. The unemployment rate soared from 4.4 percent in
March to 14.7 percent in April, but by December 2020 it had receded to 6.7 percent.76
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Current Situation
Major Concern
With the jobless rate at 3.9 percent as of December 2021 and the quit rate near a record high, the Great Resignation is having a widespread
impact on the economy.77
The current trend on resignations is so significant that it is a major worry for employers. CEOs told Fortune and Deloitte in a recent survey that it is
their number one concern. The survey of 175 CEOs found that by a 7-to-1 ratio, company heads say talent and labor issues are a bigger concern
now for their companies than the pandemic. In the survey, CEOs said that retirements are rising, jobs are unfilled, burnout lingers and workers are
leaving even after being given big raises.78
Amid their worries, some chief executives may even be taking an if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them approach to the Great Resignation. The number
of departing CEOs in the final quarter of 2021 was up 16 percent year over year, with top executives citing burnout as their reason for departing.79
And the churn is happening across a range of industries and occupations — even to the clergy. Some 38 percent of pastors in the United States
have thought about quitting full-time ministry in the past year, a survey by the Barna Group, a research organization, found.80
Ultimately, resignation rates appear to be highest among mid-career employees, according to a Harvard Business Review study. The study also
found high resignations in the tech and health care industries.81
Restaurant workers, such as this server at a Los Angeles deli, accounted for
some of the highest numbers of resignations last year. A University of California
study found that many of those in the industry who quit wind up returning to the
sector, or taking jobs in retail. (AFP/Getty Images/Patrick T. Fallon)
When workers quit, many pursue new career paths, according to a survey by the job posting website Joblist. A ZipRecruiter survey found that 20
percent of all workers say the pandemic has caused them to change the kind of job they are looking for, so that they are now focusing on remote
work.82
The high turnover is forcing companies to re-examine how they handle their workload. “With millions of Americans ditching their jobs in search of
more meaningful roles (or leaving the workplace altogether), teams of all sizes are burdened with more work and fewer team members to bear the
brunt of it,” said Allie Danziger, CEO of Ampersand Professionals, a job training company. “Smaller teams often lead to cyclical turnover problems
thanks to burnout and overworked employees.”83
Still, even as companies work to limit departures and attract more workers, there are economic signs that quitting to deal with burnout may not
remain financially sustainable. Persistent inflation may erase the value of wage increases, leading to a depletion of the savings accrued from
government supports.
And an analysis by the California Policy Lab at the University of California indicates that many workers who have left the two industries with the
most resignations — restaurant and hotel work — wind up back in those sectors, or in equally low-wage work in retail.84
Employers Respond
To address their labor shortages, employers are trying to make their positions more attractive. For office workers, that means the demand to be in
the office 40 hours a week has faded. That also may result in more receptivity among employers for a four-day workweek.
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A survey of more than 1,000 employees and managers by Skynova, an invoicing software firm, found that nearly 70 percent of managers said they
are either considering transitioning to a partial four-day workweek or already putting it in place.85 It is not just smaller employers such as Bolt, the
California tech company, that are taking this step. Panasonic is offering its employees the choice of taking a four-day workweek, which the
company said would have the effect of “freeing them up to take side jobs, volunteer or just relax.”86
Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat, has introduced legislation in Congress that would cut the standard workweek to 32 hours from 40.
“Shorter workweeks have also been shown to further reduce healthcare premiums for employers, lower operational costs for businesses and have
a positive environmental impact in some of these studies,” he said.87
Policy Perspective
The Biden administration, though, has framed the Great Resignation as simply a byproduct of a strong jobs market. “There's been a lot of press
coverage about people quitting their jobs,” President Biden said at a December press conference about the most recent jobs numbers. “Well,
today's report tells you why: Americans are moving up to better jobs with better pay and better benefits.”88
Indeed, the “so-called ‘Great Resignation’” is “not the real story,” Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said in December. “We must ensure the jobs that
workers access provide more than a paycheck — good benefits, safe workplaces and a pathway to the middle class.”89
But the strike wave that began in the final quarter of 2021 shows that workers are not waiting for their bosses to give them a better deal.
Last year, in addition to the walkouts at Kellogg and John Deere, workers went on strike at Nabisco, Columbia University and several hospitals.
Nonunionized essential workers walked out at supermarkets, warehouses and fast-food restaurants. They also tried to unionize at Starbucks,
Amazon and the Art Institute of Chicago. Initial efforts to unionize Amazon were unsuccessful, although the NLRB has ordered a new election.90
Efforts at Starbucks and the Art Institute of Chicago have been successful.91
Meanwhile, Cornell University's ILR Labor Action Tracker documented 15 separate school bus drivers’ strikes between September and November,
says Kallas, director of the project, which is run through the university's school of Industrial and Labor Relations.
“Workers from a variety of industries are organizing and striking, especially after working on the front lines of a global pandemic for close to two
years,” Kallas says.
Steven Greenhouse, a veteran labor journalist and author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present and Future of American Labor and The
Big Squeeze, sees this moment as the time for labor leaders to revive the union organizing movement.
“Yes, we are seeing unionization drives at this workplace and that one, but we are not seeing any bigger, broader effort to channel and transform
all this worker energy and discontent into a new movement, one perhaps with millions of engaged and energetic nonunion workers, that would work
in conjunction with the traditional union movement,” he said.92
However, Michael Saltsman, managing director of the Employment Policies Institute, a pro-business group, said the increase in strikes and
unionization does not represent a resurgent labor movement. He dismissed reports of worker strife as “more fiction than fact” and noted that unions
lost about half of all NLRB-supervised elections in 2021. The Buffalo Starbucks union victory, he said, will not matter unless more stores in the
chain unionize and push for a companywide bargaining agreement. “Many baristas may realize, as millions of Americans did before them, that with
a union, you don't always get what you bargain for,” he said.93
Outlook
Turn to Technology
As companies have found themselves squeezed by COVID-19-inspired lockdowns, supply chain bottlenecks and social distancing requirements,
they have looked to technology for relief. This leveraging of automation, artificial intelligence and the internet to keep operations running is likely to
continue after the pandemic eases, based on recent experience.
For example, even after workers laid off in the early pandemic shutdowns began returning to their jobs, the push to find technological solutions —
robots doing factory work, computers answering phones, artificial intelligence analyzing data and “smart” retail with self-service checkout lines and
app-powered grocery carts — did not wane. In many cases, it only accelerated. That is because, with the Great Resignation, employers found it
difficult to hire and retain workers, and as a result, they had to pay higher wages and provide better benefits than they gave before the pandemic.
Facing labor shortages and cost increases, many companies, both large and small, poured money into automation.94
That money helped manufacturers such as Seegrid, a maker of autonomous forklifts. The company's revenue has skyrocketed since the
pandemic, and it has had to double its workforce to meet demand. “Business is good,” said company CEO Jim Rock. “I'm bullish on this year and
the next five years.”95
Automation is transforming businesses of all types. According to the Association for Advancing Automation, a trade group representing
organizations that promote the use of artificial intelligence and robotic technologies, orders for robotics and other types of automation in 2021
increased by 37 percent and hit a record high.96 These investments are occurring on the factory floor, throughout warehouses, in offices and at
restaurants. For instance, Sweetgreen, the restaurant chain, recently bought another food outlet, Spyce, so it could incorporate the smaller
company's proprietary technology. At Sweetgreen restaurants, Spyce-created machines now take orders, cook food and build salad bowls for
customers.97
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This move toward automation will only increase over the next few years, observers predict, and the result will be fewer jobs and less bargaining
power for workers.98 While wages rose significantly last year for the first time in decades, many see these gains as fleeting because of
technological advances that will make workers in certain industries obsolete. By 2025, as many as 2 million more manufacturing jobs will be
replaced by robots, MIT researchers found.99
While jobs in retail, restaurants and manufacturing are certain to shrink, others are at risk, too. Taxi, ride-share and delivery drivers, for example,
are likely to become a smaller part of the workforce. Because of the pandemic, autonomous vehicles got a boost. Automakers and high-tech
companies increased their investments in self-driving technology as demand for driverless vehicles grew because Americans, particularly in the
early stages of the outbreak, were trying to limit contact with each other. In Florida, for instance, the Mayo Clinic used driverless shuttles to deliver
medical supplies and coronavirus tests.100 Pilot programs with robotaxis have already begun in Texas and California, and Walmart started using
driverless trucks last year.101 Industry observers, who once predicted that self-driving cars and trucks would take many years to catch on, now see
it happening much sooner.
High-skill jobs are not immune to the swing toward automation. Doctors, accountants and lawyers, long considered irreplaceable, are losing ground
to artificial intelligence, and there are many companies with names such as UiPath and Automation Everywhere helping professional firms employ
bots for a variety of tasks, from filling in forms and analyzing data to approving expense statements and creating reports.102 The process of
automating these tasks is called robotic process automation, or R.P.A., and the adoption of this technology is happening at a quick, under-the-
radar pace.103 Experts predict it will wipe out thousands of professional jobs in the next five to 10 years.
Jason Kingdon, the CEO of Blue Prism, one of the leading R.P.A. software producers, likes to say he is building a digital workforce, and his promise
to clients is simple: “Businesses can train digital workers to do almost anything.”104
According to the McKinsey & Co. global consulting firm, however, automation “will have a lesser effect on jobs that involve managing people,
applying expertise, and social interactions, where machines are unable to match human performance for now.” And the firm noted that “even when
some tasks are automated, employment in those occupations may not decline” because workers may perform new tasks.105
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Pro/Con
Will the Great Resignation give workers more leverage over the long term?
Pro Con
Julia Pollak J.T. O'Donnell
Chief Economist at ZipRecruiter. Written for CQ Researcher, Founder and CEO of Work It Daily. Written for CQ
February 2022 Researcher, February 2022
The coronavirus pandemic caused the greatest shift in relative scarcity The answer is “yes,” but only for those who focus on being as high as
and bargaining power from employers to employees on record. Just 20 they can be on the talent spectrum.
months ago, following more than 20 million pandemic-related layoffs
and widespread hiring freezes, there were 4.5 unemployed Americans The talent spectrum is something the recruiting industry uses to
for every job opening. Now, there are just six unemployed people for evaluate how much you should be paid. If you want to make more
every 10 openings, and employers are locked in a dogfight for talent. money, both now and in the long run, you need to be high on the talent
spectrum. People who can't hold down jobs or don't have any unique
The results of that shift are clearly reflected in job postings. Employers skill sets rank low on this spectrum. The more relevant, cutting-edge
are offering more signing bonuses, starting pay, benefits, schedule and timely your skill sets are, coupled with a track record of solid
flexibility, remote work opportunities and on-the-job training than ever performance at previous employers, the higher you are on the talent
before. And workers are voting with their feet, quitting low-paying or spectrum.
unpleasant jobs for better ones in record numbers.
Why does this matter?
ZipRecruiter CEO Ian Siegel calls this a golden age for job seekers and
workers. Increasingly, they are calling the shots. Layoffs, normally In terms of the labor market, every worker is a commodity. The prices of
responsible for 40 percent of all job separations, are now responsible all commodities are based on supply and demand. This swings back
for fewer than one in four. and forth, like a pendulum. Those who learn what their true value is
during this time will know how to stay in demand and, therefore, be able
Is the newfound leverage that workers are enjoying permanent? to attract the best job opportunities and craft a career that is more
satisfying and successful on their own terms. Those who simply take
Earlier in the pandemic, I would have guessed not. The initial gains more money because it's available right now due to the staffing
were temporary by design and fragile. When grocery stores were shortage, but fail to determine what added value they provide to
struggling to attract workers, many offered “hero pay,” only to cut it employers for this price, will eventually lose the higher wages as the
after two months. demand swings back and normalizes. The result? Many will suffer
career setbacks, both financially and professionally, when the demand
Later, when businesses were reopening and restaffing faster than for their overpriced, generalized skill set vanishes.
workers were returning, businesses resorted to signing bonuses. Such
temporary measures ruled the day because companies believed their The Great Resignation is a rare opportunity for people to get clear on
hiring difficulties would be transitory. Surely a wave of job seekers how they want to contribute, and make sure their contributions are
would flood back into the workforce when schools reopened in person, valued deeply by employers in good times and bad. So, while some will
expanded unemployment benefits expired or offices reopened. definitely profit from the leverage this opportunity provides, many others
will take a short-term windfall that will only serve to hurt them later when
However, labor force participation only gradually recovered, while they are seen as “overpriced and underskilled” by employers.
businesses’ hiring troubles deepened. At the same time, the pandemic
altered the long-term demographic outlook in a direction more My advice: Map out how the job you do right now saves or makes your
favorable to workers and more challenging for employers, with current employer more than enough to justify your current
retirements accelerating and population growth flatlining. compensation. Keep in mind, it's estimated that it costs 130 percent to
140 percent of a person's salary to employ them. The extra cost has to
The situation has forced a reckoning, a realization that temporary do with overhead, benefits, training time, etc. If you can't prove you are
bonuses and lukewarm pay raises won't cut it. Sweeping changes to bringing or saving the company enough cash to cover your costs, you
pay scales, employment models, benefits packages, scheduling are at risk of being let go when the labor shortage eases. Focus on
systems and telework policies are being enacted, giving workers more increasing your skills and learning new ones as a way to protect
say over when, where and how they perform their jobs. Those changes yourself from the ups and downs of the job market.
will be much harder to undo.
One reason is that such changes are making the nightly news — and
the information is having a profound influence on the psyche of the
American worker. Recent research by a team of economists found that
workers often underestimate how much they could earn elsewhere. But
when Amazon hikes starting pay to $18 and airlines offer crews triple
pay, word gets around. Workers’ expectations rise and take voice.
It will be hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
Discussion Questions
Here are some questions to discuss regarding the state of the U.S. labor market:
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• Why are so many Americans quitting their jobs?

• Which sectors of the economy have been most affected by the increase in resignations? Which job categories?
• How have employers attempted to cope with the rise in workers leaving? To what extent have they been successful?
• What companies have been targeted by strikes recently? What are the key demands that striking workers have made? To what extent
have they won these demands?
• Do labor market experts believe the increases in job resignations and labor strikes will become long-term trends? What could accelerate or
inhibit these trends?
• Is the increase in employee resignations a purely American phenomenon, or are other nations experiencing it as well?
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Chronology
1880–1913 The rise of the industrial economy leads to exposes of abuses.
1880 Most Americans put in 14-hour days, six days a week, without sick pay or overtime. Children as young as 8 work in coal
mines and factories.
1906 The Jungle by Upton Sinclair portrays the harsh working conditions and exploitation of immigrants in the meat-packing
industry. The novel raises awareness of health violation in the industry, as well as broader issues of working-class poverty.
1911 A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City becomes one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history,
killing 146 people, most of them young immigrant women workers. The disaster leads to enactment of several industrial
reforms.
1913 The U.S. Labor Department is created after a half-century campaign by organized labor to give workers a voice in the
Cabinet.
1929–1930s During the Great Depression, worker protections are enacted.
1929 The U.S. stock market crashes, triggering the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, known as
The Great Depression…. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union successfully demands a five-day
workweek.
1933 U.S. unemployment rate hits record high of 24.9 percent…. Congress passes a series of measures, collectively known as
the New Deal, designed to stimulate the economy and add jobs…. The National Industrial Recovery Act is enacted to
regulate industry and establish fair wages.
1935 The National Labor Relations Act secures the rights of private-sector workers to organize trade unions, participate in
collective bargaining and take collective action, such as strikes.
1938 Congress passes the Fair Labor Standards Act; it bans children under age 14 from working, limits the workweek to 44
hours and establishes a federal minimum wage of 25 cents an hour.
1940s–1950s World War II revives the economy and fuels a postwar boom.
1941 U.S. unemployment rate drops below double digits, to 9.9 percent, for the first time in more than a decade, due to the
buildup of the armed forces…. After Japan attacks Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the United States enters World War II, which had
begun two years earlier.
1944 Unemployment rate falls to historic low of 1.2 percent. A record number of women join the workforce as part of the war
effort.
1945 World War II ends; economy shifts to producing consumer goods to meet pent-up demand after war rationing.
1950s The economy grows by 37 percent over the course of the decade.
1952 The service sector now accounts for 53 percent of total U.S. employment.
1956 A majority of Americans now hold white-collar jobs. Firms increasingly offer long-term employment, a guaranteed annual
wage and other benefits.
1957 A multiyear Senate committee investigation into organized crime's involvement in unions, particularly the Teamsters,
begins. Its findings damage the labor movement's reputation; some unions are accused of misappropriating funds, rigging
elections and using intimidation and violence.
1960s–1970s Postwar economic expansion continues for a time, then falters.
1962 Manpower Development and Training Act is signed. The bill sets up training for the thousands of workers unemployed
because of automation and other technological changes.
1963 President John F. Kennedy signs the Equal Pay Act, prohibiting gender-based wage discrimination. But the law ultimately
does little to narrow the gender wage gap because its provisions make it difficult to prove discrimination.
1973 A recession begins, opening a period of economic “stagflation” — a combination of slow economic growth and high
inflation — and putting an end to the post-World War II economic expansion.
1978 The. U.S. normalizes trade relations with China. The move opens the door for China to become a manufacturing
powerhouse.
1980s–2010s Income gap widens, companies gain more power through deregulation.
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1981 President Ronald Reagan fires 11,000 striking air traffic controllers and decertifies their union. Some labor experts see the
event as a touchpoint in the decline of worker leverage. Private companies later adopt anti-union policies.
1987 The movie Wall Street is released, popularizing the idea that blue-collar workers are being exploited by the financial
industry.
1997 The Business Roundtable, a group of major corporate leaders, says that “the paramount duty of management and of
boards of directors is to the corporation's stockholders.”
2007 The Great Recession, sparked by the bursting of the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis, leads to the most
severe economic decline since the Great Depression. During this period, U.S. quit rates decrease to 1.3 percent from 2
percent and the hiring rate falls to 2.8 percent from 3.7 percent.
2020–Present The COVID-19 pandemic transforms the labor market.
2020 U.S. lockdowns to combat the spread of COVID-19 cause massive layoffs; unemployment briefly spikes to 14.7 percent,
the highest rate since the Great Depression…. Many companies close offices and shift employees to work remotely from
home to protect them from the virus…. Quit rate falls to 1.6 percent…. More than 22 million Americans lose their jobs
because of the coronavirus-inspired recession, but many of these jobs return by year's end…. After plummeting in the
initial stages of the pandemic, resignation rates return to prepandemic levels.
2021 U.S. job quit rate hits 2.4 percent, the highest rate in 20 years…. Some 3.8 million Americans quit their jobs in one month,
setting a record…. Anthony Klotz, a professor of management at Texas A&M University, predicts a mass exodus from the
workplace and coins the term “Great Resignation.” … A wave of labor strikes, which economists dub “Striketober,”
emerges as a symbol of the changing dynamic between bosses and workers in the labor market…. More companies
announce that remote work will be permanent; others announce a change to a hybrid environment combining remote and
in-office work…. A record 4.5 million people quit their jobs in November…. The unemployment rate falls to 3.9 percent in
December.
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CQ Researcher
Short Features
Workers in Many Countries Are Quitting More, Questioning Norms
In China, “lying flat” confronts the “996” work culture.
While the United States has been the poster child for the “Big Quit” phenomenon, this trend is not unique to Americans. Workers around the world
have reported an interest in quitting their jobs.
A 2021 survey conducted by Microsoft of 30,000 employees in 31 countries found that 54 percent of Gen Z workers (those born after 1996) and 41
percent of the entire workforce were considering resigning. The report's authors pointed to remote work as the reason for discontent among Gen Z
workers or people beginning their careers. When new hires enter the workforce through a software program such as Zoom, they feel isolated from
their place of employment, and they reported facing “digital burnout.”1
Great Britain has experienced the Great Resignation in ways that mirror the United States. British workers have left their jobs at historic rates; for
the first time, job vacancies surpassed a million positions.2 Some 3.2 percent of the workforce switched positions in the third quarter of last year.
Meanwhile, many Britons over age 55 have chosen to retire early.3
In addition, Brexit — the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union — sparked an exodus of Europeans from Britain, which
exacerbated the growing labor deficit and, in turn, threw some sectors into chaos. Last year, the U.K. government had to issue thousands of
temporary visas to immigrants when Britain was hit with a national fuel crisis caused by a shortage of truck drivers, which slowed supply chains and
halted deliveries to gasoline stations.4
Germany has also experienced early retirements among older workers, and more than a third of all companies in the country — Europe's largest
economy — have reported trouble finding skilled workers.5 Leaders there have been calling for increased immigration to combat the labor deficit.6
This trend has not been uniform throughout Europe, however. Workers in France have historically retired at relatively younger ages, and the labor
force participation rate there has not markedly declined since the pandemic started.7
Asia is experiencing labor changes as well, although in a different way. China, for one, has seen a backlash in attitudes about what it means to be
successful. For decades, China's work model was based on a “996” framework, shorthand for an intense work culture, literally meaning to work
from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., six days a week.8
Since the pandemic started, there has been a strong pushback against this schedule, especially following two high-profile deaths at Pinduoduo, an
e-commerce company based in Shanghai. One worker committed suicide and a woman who put in 380 hours a month at the company collapsed
and died as she left work one day.9
After those incidents, a blog post last April about “tang ping,” or “lying flat,” went viral. Younger workers praised the blog's prescription for a happy
life: stop working, stay single, forgo having children and relax.10 The post was soon banned by Chinese censors, but the writer's criticism that
Chinese society was too competitive and materialistic has continued to reverberate.11
“Squid Game,” a 2021 Netflix series about exploitation, became hugely popular
in China even though the government banned it. Chinese workers have begun
to push back against the country's intense work culture of 12-hour days, six
days a week. (Screenshot)
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Not surprisingly, “Squid Game,” the violent 2021 Netflix series produced in South Korea about exploitation, was wildly popular in China, even
though it was banned by the government and had to be watched illegally.12 Chinese social media apps were flooded with discussions about the
show, and “Squid Game” masks and candies became a national sensation.13
China's business leaders have taken note of the backlash against the nation's work culture. ByteDance, the technology company that owns TikTok,
recently announced new restrictions on work hours to discourage employees from working too long.14 At the same time, a slew of Chinese
companies canceled a popular work structure known as “big week/little week,” in which workers had a weekend off only every other week.
In August, China's Supreme People's Court ruled that it is illegal for companies to force workers to abide by 996.15
Still, China's government has made it clear that it intends to adopt policies that will sustain its status as an economic superpower. As the lying flat
movement took hold, officials announced a new three-child policy to encourage couples to combat the nation's population decline and have more
children, leading one commentator to say, “We are all thinking about how best to lie down while they are pushing us to reproduce.”16
— Holly Rosenkrantz
[1] Sean Fleming, “Survey: 40% of employees are thinking of quitting their jobs,” World Economic Forum, June 2, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/ydbxanrm.
[2] “Britain's economy does not lack oomph, but productivity is lacking,” The Economist, Nov. 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yckh4xmu.
[3] “Why the rich world is facing a hiring problem,” The Economist, Dec. 3, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/3zj8wpm8.
[4] Haley Ott, “U.K. gas pumps run dry as truck driver shortage causes supply chain chaos,” CBS News, Sept. 29, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/4jzr6ysp.
[5] “More and More Companies Lament Lack of Skilled Workers,” press release, IFO Institute, Aug. 12, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/hwb3uuap.
[6] “Germany needs greater immigration to avoid labour shortages — minister,” Reuters, Jan. 11, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2ccbxuz3.
[7] Paul Krugman, “What Europe Can Teach Us About Jobs,” The New York Times, Nov. 29, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2ywchdmy.
[8] Bill Chappell, “Employers Can't Require People To Work 72 Hours A Week, China's High Court Says,” NPR, Aug. 30, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/4b586nz5.
[9] Vivian Wang, “Worker Deaths Put Big Tech in China Under Scrutiny,” The New York Times, Feb. 5, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2rbucudn.
[10] Elsie Chen, “These Chinese Millennials Are ‘Chilling,’ and Beijing Isn't Happy,” The New York Times, Oct. 10, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/22d8brp8.
[11] Lily Kuo, “Young Chinese take a stand against pressures of modern life — by lying down,” The Washington Post, June 5, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/3dzrrrau.
[12] Huileng Tan, “Netflix isn't available in China but that hasn't stopped businesses there from cashing in on the ‘Squid Game’ frenzy with merch,”
Business Insider, Oct. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4mxpzbay.
[13] “Illegal streams, merch bonanza: Squid Game craze hit China,” France 24, Oct. 13, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4cedyaww.
[14] Lily Kuo, “TikTok owner ByteDance shortens China work hours, discouraging notorious ‘996’ routine,” The Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/ya2dau23.
[15] Chappell, op. cit.
[16] Kuo, “Young Chinese take a stand against pressures of modern life — by lying down,” op. cit.
Schools Hit Hard by Resignation-Driven Staff Shortages

“People are just tired.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit the United States in 2020, one of the biggest impacts was the massive closing of K-12 schools. Now that
many schools are open again, they are facing the effects of the Great Resignation.
Since last July, the number of people working in education for local governments has fallen by more than 200,000.17 Data from the Bureau of
Labor Statistics showed that about 3.33 million people employed in education resigned during the 12 months ending in September 2021.18 And a
January survey by the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers’ union, found that 55 percent of all teachers plan to leave the
field sooner than they had originally planned because of the pandemic.19
“People are just tired,” said Rodney Lewis, assistant superintendent of human resources at the St. Charles school district in suburban St. Louis.20
The resignations and job shortages are occurring across all sectors of education. In a July survey by the School Nutrition Association, a national
organization of professionals in that field, 90 percent of school food service directors said they were concerned about staffing shortages.21 “The
frustration is real,” said Lori Adkins, president of the association. “I'm worried about burnout.”22
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CQ Researcher
To cope with these labor shortages, schools and government officials are getting creative.
In Ohio, some school districts have cut degree requirements for substitute teachers and increased their pay.23 State officials in Kansas and
Oregon are allowing job candidates with as little as a high school diploma to apply for substitute teaching positions.24 Other states have eased
regulations to make it easier for retired teachers to return to the classroom, and some districts are appealing to parents and college students to
sign up for substitute teaching.25 In New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has asked the National Guard to work in classrooms, saying
volunteers would get active-duty pay.26
Seattle school bus driver Treva White delivers meals to children and their
families shortly after the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020. School districts are
facing shortages in many job categories after being hit by high levels of
resignations. (Getty Images/Karen Ducey)
In addition, the federal departments of Education and Transportation have said that states can waive part of the commercial driver's license
requirement to meet a bus driver shortage.27 In Gainesville, Ga., a district is addressing a shortage of school nurses by increasing pay by about
$480 a month.28
Resignations are also hitting hard in the daycare industry, where pay is notoriously low — the median annual pay in the field, $25,460, is below the
poverty line for a family of four, according to the Department of Labor. Daycare workers are leaving the field for higher-paying jobs as bank tellers,
administrative assistants and retail clerks. “The pay is absolute crap for what is required of the position,” said Tanzie Roberts, a former daycare
worker.29
Daycare center operators say they have only a limited ability to increase pay because labor costs account for most of their budgets and any pay
raises must be passed on to parents, who often also have limited means. “Child-care providers have very narrow margins,” said Philip Sirinides, a
professor at Pennsylvania State University who has studied the industry.30
The staffing shortages in schools and daycare facilities are having ripple effects throughout the labor market, preventing some parents from being
able to return to the workplace.
“We've seen a very slow recovery in the daycare industry, and that has a significant impact on the rest of the economy,” says Daniel Zhao, senior
economist at Glassdoor, an online job search site. “It means that parents can't return to work.”31
Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Women's Law Center, which advocates for women's rights, said the burden of the labor
shortage in the childcare industry is falling heavily on women. “If you don't have a safe place for your kid to go, you're not coming back to work, and
that's going to disproportionately impact women,” she said.32
— Holly Rosenkrantz
[17] Dante Chinni, “’Great Resignation’ hits schools across all positions,” NBC News, Dec. 26, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yb5eudru.
[18] Brandy Keller, “Head In The Cloud? Overcoming The Great Resignation Through Technological Investments in Education,” EdNews Daily,
https://tinyurl.com/yw5vddjs; “Quit levels and rates by industry and region, seasonally adjusted,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jan. 4, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/2p8r95cv.
[19] Nick Morrison, “Stopping The Great Teacher Resignation Will Be Education's Greatest Challenge for 2022,” Forbes, Dec. 24, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/4tn57vks; Eric Jotkoff, “NEA survey: Massive staff shortages in schools leading to educator burnout; alarming number of
educators indicating they plan to leave the profession,” National Education Association, Feb. 1, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/43yhbexf; Clint Rainey,
“Public schools are facing an existential Great Resignation of teachers,” Fast Company, Feb. 1, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2cb7n7ut.
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CQ Researcher
[20] Elizabeth Heubeck, “What Teachers Who Might Quit Are Really Thinking,” EducationWeek, Oct. 28, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/377erybd.
[21] “SNA Survey: Extensive Challenges Persist into SY 2021-22,” School Nutrition Association, July 8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ye2waeur.
[22] Tracie Mauriello, “Michigan schools struggle to feed students because of supply chain issues and worker shortages,” Chalkbeat Detroit, Dec.
8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p896bsb.
[23] Karin Johnson, “Ohio responds to substitute teaching shortage, degree no longer required,” WLWT5, Jan. 5, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/2s3rcfn5.
[24] Sarah Ritter, “Kansas school officials declare emergency, relax substitute teacher requirements,” The Kansas City Star, Jan. 12, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/mr2uk3es; Jordyn Brown, “Shortage of substitute teachers statewide prompts Oregon to change licensing requirement,” The
Register-Guard, Nov. 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yfhw48du.
[25] Evie Bland, “Schools Are Desperate for Substitutes and Getting Creative,” EducationWeek, Jan. 20, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/yckhkyyj.
[26] “Gov. Asks National Guard To Fill Overwhelming Substitute Teacher Shortage,” The Associated Press, Jan. 19, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/y55d35tv.
[27] “DOT, Dept. of Education Announce Temporary Waiver to Help Increase the Number of School Bus Drivers Nationwide,” U.S. Department of
Transportation, Jan. 4, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p98tck6.
[28] Ben Anderson, “How nursing shortage is affecting Hall schools,” The Gainesville Times, Jan. 6, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p924sk6.
[29] Heather Long, “‘The pay is absolute crap’: Child-care workers are quitting rapidly, a red flag for the economy,” The Washington Post, Sept. 19,
2021, https://tinyurl.com/yc3a4xa9.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Juliana Kaplan and Madison Huff, “A big reason for the labor shortage is hiding in plain sight — daycares are losing workers,” Insider, Dec. 4,
2021, https://tinyurl.com/5cs85tc6.
[32] Ibid.
Bibliography
Books
Douglas, Teresa, Holly Gordon and Mike Webber, Working Remotely: Secrets to Success for Employees on Distributed Teams,
Barron's Educational Series, 2020. Three authors who work remotely discuss challenges and paths to success for those who do not work in an
office.
Greenhouse, Steven, Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present and Future of American Labor, Penguin Random House, 2019. A
former New York Times labor reporter explores the future of the union movement.
Malesic, Jonathan, The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives, University of California Press, 2022. A
former tenured professor uses a mix of academic methodology and his own experience to address what he calls the “cultural obsession” with work.
Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, Ticknor and Fields, 1854. In this classic book by history's founding transcendentalist, Thoreau delineates a
formula for simple living to escape day-to-day drudgery that some say was as tedious in his time as modern-day office-work.
Warzel, Charlie, and Anne Helen Peterson, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home, Penguin
Random House, 2021. Two former Buzzfeed journalists document, through reporting and interviews with workers and managers, new trends in
work-life balance in the pandemic and post-pandemic workplace.
Articles
Cohen, Arianne, “How to Quit Your Job in the Great Post-Pandemic Resignation Boom,” Bloomberg Businessweek, May 10, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/2p98rpcc. In this journalist's seminal article on the job-leaving trend, a Texas A&M professor coined the term “the Great
Resignation.”
Cox, Jeff, “Millions of people quit their jobs in the ‘Great Resignation.’ Here is why it may not last long,” CNBC.com, Nov. 18, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/3exx28jp. Amid an avalanche of reporting that says the Great Resignation is here to stay, a business journalist takes a
contrary view.
Korducki, Kelli, “Quitting has become contagious,” Fortune, Jan. 22, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/mrxewabx. The business news magazine
looks at the role of social media in fueling the Great Resignation.
Long, Heather, and Maggie Penman, “Life after quitting: What happened next to the workers who left their jobs,” The Washington
Post, Dec. 16, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4dedd2vb. Two journalists take a deeply reported look at how low-wage workers are faring after quitting
their jobs.
Page 24 of 30
CQ Researcher
Scheiber, Noam, “How the Pandemic Has Added to Labor Unrest,” The New York Times, Nov. 3, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ys246jbp. The
Times’ labor and workplace correspondent documents the increase in workplace strikes, an element of the larger trend of workers pushing back
against their conditions.
Thompson, Derek, “The Great Resignation Is Accelerating,” The Atlantic, Oct. 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2jjfjp8c. A prominent
workplace journalist argues that the Great Resignation will only grow in impact.
Ward, Myah, “The Great Resignation comes for schools,” Politico Nightly, Jan. 7, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/muufxyyb. A reporter
documents the effect of the Great Resignation on schools and education.
Reports and Studies
“Future of Work,” McKinsey & Co., https://tinyurl.com/4k744kxe. This collection of reports by the global consulting firm looks at key trends in
the labor market, such as the role of technology in transforming the workforce.
“The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work — Are We Ready?” Microsoft Work Trend Index, March 22, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/2rpn99n2. A study by the tech giant, conducted before the Great Resignation became a popularized label, found that 41
percent of the global workforce was likely to consider leaving their employer within the next year.
Bell, Alex, et al., “December 8th Analysis of Unemployment Insurance Claims in California During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” California
Policy Lab, Dec. 8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p9eunkp. An analysis by a University of California research institute indicates that many workers
who left the fields of restaurant and hotel work, the two sectors with the most resignations, end up back in those industries or in similarly low-wage
retail work.
The Next Step

Burnout
Karlamangla, Soumya, “Despite Burnout, These California Health Care Workers Aren't Quitting,” The New York Times, Jan. 27, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/4h7z29u4. Stressed doctors and nurses explain why they refuse to abandon their co-workers and patients.
Maher, Kris, and Julie Wernau, “Omicron Leaves Nurses Stretched Thin and Seeking Help From Burnout,” The Wall Street Journal,
Jan. 24, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/mvmpjspy. Nurses are calling for better working conditions and more hiring as hospital staff shortages
become more common during the Omicron surge, with many health care workers out sick.
Phan, Suzanne, “More teachers face burnout during pandemic because of mental health, staffing issues,” KOMO News, Jan. 20,
2022, https://tinyurl.com/yh6ud8b3. A teacher shortage, particularly among substitutes, is contributing to burnout of Seattle educators.
Hiring Efforts
Henry, Natassia, and Matt Houston, “State hospitals offering $5,000 hiring bonus to registered nurses,” Ken5, Jan. 25, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/mrx2ezut. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission is offering hiring bonuses for registered nurses who agree to
work at state hospitals or state-supported living facilities.
Kmack, Sam, “Short-staffed Tucson undertakes massive hiring effort,” Tucson.com, Jan. 14, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/4e8zh8cf. The
city of Tucson, Ariz., is raising pay as it faces staff shortages across several departments, including among 911 dispatch operators and building
code inspectors.
Lambert, Diana, “California school districts improve pay, working conditions to ease teacher shortage,” EdSource, Jan. 27, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/7dtz7pbu. California school districts are hiring teachers who are not fully credentialed, as they raise teacher pay and try to
assuage concerns about COVID-19 in the classroom.
Unions
DePass, Dee, “Minnesota union memberships rise in 2021, bucking national trend,” StarTribune, Jan. 24, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/4mwunymk. The share of unionized Minnesota workers rose to 16 percent in 2021, up from 13.7 percent in 2019.
Johnston, Taylor, “The U.S. Labor Movement Is Popular, Prominent and Also Shrinking,” The New York Times, Jan. 25, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/338jt3e9. Despite several high-profile unionization efforts in the past year, the share of private-sector workers who are in a
union continues to decline nationwide.
Roeder, David, “CTA reports labor deal with transit union,” Chicago Sun-Times, Jan. 24, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2uhdrjez. A tentative
deal between the Chicago Transit Authority and the union representing bus and rail workers would hike pay more than 9 percent through 2023.
Worker Shortages
Kamal, Sameea, “Transit worker shortage ripples through California economy,” CalMatters, Jan. 25, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/mvxkt7ss. California public transit service is being disrupted, with many transit employees sick with COVID or afraid to come
to work because of the virus.
Martin, John T., “Evansville, Henderson labor force: Needs seen in health care, driving, hospitality,” Evansville Courier & Press, Jan.
13, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p897ske. Restaurant staff, nurses and truckers are in high demand in southwestern Indiana, but manufacturers
Page 25 of 30
CQ Researcher
are having less trouble finding workers.

Ruark, Jeremy C., “Drive-Up Hiring: Event at St. Helens draws employers, job seekers,” The St. Helens Chronicle, Sept. 28, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/2p8m77pm. Some businesses in St. Helens, Ore., were too short-staffed even to send employees to a hiring event meant to
address widespread shortages in the region, which have been forcing local businesses to cut hours.
Contacts
Bureau of Labor Statistics
2 Massachusetts Ave., N.E., Washington, DC 20212
202-691-5200
bls.gov
Federal agency that measures labor market activity, working conditions and price changes in the U.S. economy.
Economic Policy Institute
1225 I St., N.W., Suite 600, Washington, DC 20005
202-775-8810
epi.org
Liberal think tank that advocates for low- and middle-income workers, studies labor conditions and jobs.
Glassdoor
73 Geary St., San Francisco, CA 94108
415-339-9105
glassdoor.com
A job search website that shares company ratings and reviews by current and former employees.
Indeed
6433 Champion Grandview Way, Building 1, Austin, TX 78850
512-459-5300
indeed.com
Job listing website that also publishes reports on career trends.
Labor Action Tracker
309 Ives Hall, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
866-470-1922
striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu
A project run by Cornell University that seeks to provide a comprehensive database of U.S. labor strike and protest activity.
National Bureau of Economic Research
1050 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138
617-868-3900
nber.org
Nonpartisan organization that conducts and disseminates economic research and analysis on a variety of issues.
National Education Association
1201 16th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036
202-833-4000
nea.org
The nation's largest teachers’ union, representing 3 million members in affiliate organizations in every state and in more than 14,000 communities
across the United States.
Society for Human Resource Management
1800 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314
800-283-7476
shrm.org
Provides information on workplace issues for more than 300,000 human resources and business executives worldwide.
Footnotes
[1] John Herrman, “Quitting Your Job Never Looked So Fun,” The New York Times, Oct. 29, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/mpkxjz4v.
[2] Ben Cost, “It's QuitTok! Zoomers celebrate their job resignation on social media,” The New York Post, Dec. 8, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/yc4khr23; Trish Rooney, “The latest viral trend taking over social media? Quitting your job,” Salon, Nov. 7, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/yc2y7xkw.
[3] Cal Newport, “It's Time to Embrace Slow Productivity,” The New Yorker, Jan. 3, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/ycksa9dm.
[4] Michelle Fox, “This company just decided to give employees a 4-day workweek permanently,” CNBC, Jan. 5, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/y6ns4jet.
Page 26 of 30
CQ Researcher
[5] Donald Sull, Charles Sull and Ben Zweig, “Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation,” MITSloan Management Review, Jan. 11, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/mr78u3rm.
[6] Bill Whitaker, “The Great Resignation: Why more Americans are quitting their jobs than ever before,” CBS News, Jan. 9, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/ycknwmu5.
[7] Andrea Hsu, “As The Pandemic Recedes, Millions Of Workers Are Saying ‘I Quit,’” NPR, June 24, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2x8bwduv.
[8] Lisa Beilfuss, “Where Are the Workers? Millions Are Sick With ‘Long Covid,’” Barron's, Dec. 8, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p8typk4.
[9] Jeff Cox, “The ‘Great Resignation’ slowed down in October, while job openings jumped,” CNBC, Dec. 8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p9yaj6e; Ben
Casselman, “More quit jobs than ever, but most turnover is in low wage work,” The New York Times, Jan. 4, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/yb8s3e53;
Bryan Mena, “U.S. Job Openings, Quits Remained Elevated at End of Last Year,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 1, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/47fsvmm3.
[10] Rooney, op. cit.
[11] Jennifer Liu, “4 million people quit their jobs in April, sparked by confidence they can find better work,” CNBC, June 9, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/538mesbd; Lucia Mutikani, “U.S. job openings, quits hit record highs in April,” Reuters, June 8, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/5nex6h2k.
[12] Paul Davidson, “Great Resignation: The number of people quitting jobs hit an all-time high in November as openings stayed near record,” USA
Today, Jan. 4, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/bdde96nd.
[13] Martha C. White, “The flip side of the ‘great resignation’ — a small-business boom,” NBC News, Dec. 30, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p93bbvd.
[14] Noam Scheiber, “How the Pandemic has Added to Labor Unrest,” The New York Times, Nov. 1, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/45fjrkjx; Jasmine
Kerrissey and Judy Stepan-Norris, “U.S. workers have been striking in startling numbers. Will that continue?” The Washington Post, Nov. 11, 2921,
https://tinyurl.com/rs66tc6s; Steve Flamisch, “#Striketober Becomes #Strikesgiving,” Rutgers Today, Nov. 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p922x3u.
[15] “John Deere strike ends after workers OK pact with hefty raises in third vote,” CBS News, Nov. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p94vm5w;
“Kellogg's strike ends after workers vote to ratify new contract,” CBS News, Dec. 22, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p9dm85j.
[16] Heather Haddon and Allison Prang, “More Starbucks Baristas Across the U.S. Are Looking to Unionize,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 21,
2022, https://tinyurl.com/3p9ufbck.
[17] Scheiber, op. cit.
[18] “Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed Jan. 21, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p99jtxp.
[19] Derek Thompson, “The Great Resignation Is Accelerating,” The Atlantic, Oct. 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p8p9zb8.
[20] Neil Irwin, “Workers Are Gaining Leverage Over Employers Right Before Our Eyes,” The New York Times, June 5, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/ypaa5ve6.
[21] Arianne Cohen, “How to Quit Your Job in the Great Post-Pandemic Resignation Boom,” Bloomberg Businessweek, May 10, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/3zymcykf.
[22] Rani Molla, “A new era for the American worker,” Vox, Jan. 11, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/yckjujvu; “Hours Worked,” Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development, accessed Jan. 21, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/mpk6a52j.
[23] Elise Gould, “Economic Indicators: JOLTS,” Economic Policy Institute, Aug. 9, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/8wd48bms.
[24] Suzanne Kahn, “What the Increase in Quit Rates During a Recession Means for Women — and How to Counteract It,” Ms., Sept. 30, 2020,
https://tinyurl.com/4me6ftdx; “Gender Differences in Sectors of Employment,” Status of Women in the United States, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/2jt8kwf4.
[25] Abhinav Chugh, “What is ‘The Great Resignation’? An expert explains,” World Economic Forum, Nov. 29, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p8fyu4r.
[26] “Economic Indicators: JOLTS,” Economic Policy Institute, April 26, 2019, https://www.epi.org/indicators/jolts/.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Myah Ward, “The Great Resignation comes for schools,” Politico, Jan. 7, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/mtjmr3cj.
[29] Whitaker, op. cit.; “Quit levels and rates by industry and region, seasonally adjusted,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Jan. 4, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/2p8hrzwf.
[30] “1 in 4 workers plan on quitting in 2022, as Great Resignation continues,” Resume Builder, Jan. 3, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/yt73kb38.
[31] Cohen, op. cit.
[32] Adewale Maye, “No-Vacation Nation, Revised,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 2019, https://tinyurl.com/4tejz4fn.
[33] Sull, op. cit.
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CQ Researcher
[34] Ibid.
[35] Jeff Cox, “Millions of people quit their jobs in the ‘Great Resignation.’ Here is why it may not last long,” CNBC, Nov. 18, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/5cj5vr39.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Rashida Kamal, “Quitting is just half the story: the truth behind the ‘Great Resignation,” The Guardian, Jan. 4, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/mr2f9a4a.
[38] Cox, op. cit.
[39] “Job retention schemes during the COVID-19 lockdown and beyond,” OECD, Oct. 12, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/mry7sejx; “Kurzarbeit:
Germany's Short-Time Work Benefit,” IMF News, June 15, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/29tn2rf2.
[40] Greg Iacurci, “Quit a job? You likely can't collect unemployment benefits,” CNBC, Nov. 12, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/5fmr5vh6.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Kathryn A. Edwards, “How to Explain This Weird Job Market,” The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 14, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/52nmuwkf.
[43] Ibid.; Nick Bunker, “Indeed Job Search Survey October 2021: Job Search Recedes Among the Jobless,” Indeed Hiring Lab, Nov. 2, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/2p8fwd73.
[44] “National Compensation Survey: Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2021,” U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
September 2021, https://tinyurl.com/438cpbr8; Katherine Guyot and Richard V. Reeves, “Unpredictable work hours and volatile income are long-
term risks for American workers,” The Brookings Institution, Aug. 18, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/57xzbbc7.
[45] Guyot and Reeves, ibid.
[46] Jaewon Kang and Sharon Terlep, “Retailers Phase Out Coronavirus Hazard Pay for Essential Workers,” The Wall Street Journal, May 19,
2020, https://tinyurl.com/bddst5cu.
[47] Sapna Maheshwari and Michael Corkery, “For Retail Workers, Omicron Disruptions Aren't Just About Health,” The New York Times, Jan. 11,
2022, https://tinyurl.com/bdds6hc9; Leticia Miranda, “‘We deserve more’: Grocery workers lament extra work, lack of hazard pay as omicron
decimates workforce,” NBC News, Jan. 14, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/yujbk8s3.
[48] Molly Kinder, Laura Stateler and Julia Du, “The COVID-19 hazard continues, but hazard pay does not: Why America's essential workers need
a raise,” The Brookings Institution, Oct. 29, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/khz38ne5.
[49] David Gutman, “Mayor Jenny Durkan will use veto to keep hazard pay in place for Seattle grocery workers,” The Seattle Times, Dec. 21, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/4d7mhh39.
[50] Megan Leonhardt, “CVS and Walgreens just cut down paid sick leave for workers,” Fortune, Jan. 11, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/5epch9cw.
[51] Ibid.
[52] “The nature of paid work is transforming rapidly,” The Shift Project, https://tinyurl.com/2f4p5te7; Megan Leonhardt, “CVS and Walgreens just
cut down paid sick leave for workers,” Fortune, Jan. 11, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/3p2v5ham.
[53] Siddharth Cavale and Praveen Paramasivam, “Workers at nearly 800 Kroger's King Soopers go on strike as talks stall,” Reuters, Jan. 13,
2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p9c498j; Kristopher Brooks, “Striking King Soopers workers demand higher pay, citing COVID-19 risks,” CBS News, Jan.
14, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p8rsek3.
[54] Maura Barrett, “Kroger workers’ strike in Colorado ends after 10 days, tentative deal reached,” NBC News, Jan. 21, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/3xmsc2rn.
[55] David Brody, Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle (1993), pp. 14-15.
[56] “America at Work,” Library of Congress, https://tinyurl.com/yv75pc3y; “Organized Labor,” UShistory.org, https://tinyurl.com/3833zkhn.
[57] Seth D. Harris and Alan B. Krueger, “A Proposal for Modernizing Labor Laws for Twenty-First-Century Work: The ‘Independent Worker,’” The
Hamilton Project, December 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y5zlgx8w.
[58] Jonathan Grossman, “Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a Minimum Wage,” Department of Labor,
https://tinyurl.com/y7vxxuz5.
[59] “1936, December 30: Sit-down strike begins in Flint,” History, http://tinyurl.com/8vcpc58.
[60] “Right to Work Resources,” National Conference of State Legislatures, https://tinyurl.com/y6q4g7gp; “Right to Work Resources,” National
Conference of State Legislatures, https://tinyurl.com/y6q4g7gp.
[61] Ibid.; María Cristina Santana, “From Empowerment to Domesticity: The Case of Rosie the Riveter and the WWII Campaign,” Frontiers in
Sociology, Dec. 23, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/2jknbbwj.
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CQ Researcher
[62] Susan M. Hartmann, The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (1982).
[63] Meehika Barua, “Career Change: Will COVID-19's impact on work-life balance endure?” CQ Researcher, Sept. 17, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/2hxnjzyz.
[64] Thompson, op. cit.; Raven Molloy, Christopher Smith and Abigail K. Wozniak, “Changing Stability in the U.S. Employment Relationships: A Tale
of Two Tails,” National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2020, https://tinyurl.com/4mmh88cu.
[65] Stephen J. Rose, “Do Not Blame Trade for the Decline in Manufacturing Jobs,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/6vtw9pha.
[66] Ian D. Wyatt and Daniel E. Hecker, “Occupational changes during the 20th century,” Monthly Labor Review, March 2006,
https://tinyurl.com/9kvfz2y9.
[67] Jonathan Malesic, “Burnout dominated 2021. Here's the history of our burnout problem,” The Washington Post, Jan. 1, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/55vr35j8.
[68] Ibid.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Ibid.
[71] Ibid.
[72] Ibid.
[73] Nelson Lichtenstein, “Are we witnessing a “General Strike’ in our own time?” The Washington Post, Nov. 18, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/mr3wfhwv.
[74] Jay L. Zagorsky, “Are we really facing a resignation crisis?” World Economic Forum, Jan. 13, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p8kusyx.
[75] “Great Recession, great recovery? Trends from the Current Population Survey,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Review, April 2018,
https://tinyurl.com/2yystr6n.
[76] “Temporary layoffs remain high following unprecedented surge in early 2020,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Feb. 10, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/s9s89chd; “Unemployment rate,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, updated Jan. 7, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2c8cparx.
[77] “Unemployment Rate,” ibid.
[78] Lance Lambert, “CEOs say the Great Resignation is their No. 1 concern,” Fortune, Jan. 20, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2mrjabum.
[79] Martha C. White, “CEOs are joining the ‘Great Resignation,’ trading fatigue for family time,” NBC News, Jan. 18, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/yp2raj4u.
[80] Shirah Matsuzawa, “Pastors leaving jobs amid ‘Great Resignation,’” KTVB7, Jan. 19, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/bde9x5rt; “38% of U.S. Pastors
Have Thought About Quitting Full-Time Ministry in the Past Year,” Barna, Nov. 16, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p9yj973.
[81] Ian Cook, “Who Is Driving the Great Resignation?” Harvard Business Review, Sept. 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/bdu4rw8u.
[82] Paul Davidson, “Great Resignation: The number of people quitting jobs hit an all-time high in November as openings stayed near record,” USA
Today, Jan. 4, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/bdza7t69.
[83] Allie Danziger, “Could Gen-Z Be Your Company's Solution to the Great Resignation?” Forbes, Jan. 21, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p9c3pbs.
[84] Heather Long and Maggie Penman, “Life after quitting: What happened next to the workers who left their jobs,” The Washington Post, Dec. 16,
2021, https://tinyurl.com/t6pb9wru; “December 8th Analysis of Unemployment Insurance Claims in California During the Covid-19 Pandemic,”
California Policy Lab, Dec. 8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/bdzftmep.
[85] “The 40 hour week is dead, now what?” skynova, accessed Jan. 27, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p96jrcn.
[86] Jack Kelly, “Two Major Companies Announced Four-Day Workweeks — This May Be The Tipping Point For Businesses To Join The Growing
Movement,” Forbes, Jan., 10, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/ppsjv2y7; “Panasonic to introduce optional 4-day work week,” NHK World-Japan, Jan. 7,
2022, https://tinyurl.com/yzbpdfky.
[87] Jack Kelly, “California Congressman Mark Takano Introduces Legislation For a Four-Day Workweek,” Forbes, July 29, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/2p9fvscc.
[88] “Remarks by President Biden on the December 2021 Jobs Report,” The White House, Jan. 7, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/4m7zdvj7.
[89] Paul Davidson, “How can US solve ‘Great Resignation’? Create better jobs, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh says,” USA Today, Jan. 21, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/24spv7sb.
[90] “Amazon unionization efforts get a boost under a settlement with the labor board,” The Associated Press, Dec. 23, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/2p8ehcwb; Robert Channick, “Art Institute employees win vote to form Chicago's first major museum union,” Chicago Tribune,
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CQ Researcher
Jan. 11, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/3t62cd4m; Noam Scheiber, “Taking on Starbucks, Inspired by Bernie Sanders,” The New York Times, Jan. 14,
2022, https://tinyurl.com/2p8m7kk7.
[91] Steven Greenhouse, “Workers across the US are rising up. Can they turn their anger into a movement?” The Guardian, Jan. 3, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/ycrhbdcu.
[92] Ibid.
[93] Michael Saltsman, “Big Labor's Resurgence That Wasn't,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 23, 2022, https://tinyurl.com/5dfx6xaj.
[94] “Future of Work,” McKinsey & Co., https://tinyurl.com/3h455ysw; “Do we need humans for that job? Automation booms after COVID,” The
Associated Press, Sept 6, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/mry843jr.
[95] David Lynch, “Hiring troubles prompt some employers to eye automation and machines,” The Washington Post, May 19, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/yckpebp3.
[96] Brett Molina, “Robot orders by companies surge as labor shortages linger,” USA Today, Nov. 13, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ms6vujun.
[97] Anissa Gardizy, “How much did Sweetgreen pay for robot-kitchen startup Spyce? $50 million,” The Boston Globe, Oct. 27, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/mu56cfyw.
[98] Ben Casselman, “Pandemic Wave of Automation May Be Bad News for Workers,” The New York Times, July 3, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/yhxerda8.
[99] Ben Popken, “Manufacturers embrace robots, the perfect pandemic worker,” NBC News, April 8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/e2uv7d7n.
[100] Tia R. Ford, ”Autonomous shuttles help transport COVID-19 tests at Mayo Clinic in Florida,” Mayo Clinic, April 2, 2020,
https://tinyurl.com/449mm24e.
[101] Jay Ramey, “Walmart is Already Using Driverless Trucks,” Autoweek, Nov. 9, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yc6ykand.
[102] Jack Kelly, “AI-Powered Bots May Be The Answer To The Great Resignation And War For Talent,” Forbes, Jan. 20, 2022,
https://tinyurl.com/bp5ktjse.
[103] Kevin Roose, “The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting,” The New York Times, March 6, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yrrfpx9e.
[104] Jason Kingdon, “4 Reasons Why Workers Should Welcome Artificial Intelligence In the Workplace,” Entrepreneur, March 2, 2021,
https://tinyurl.com/2p9exwue.
[105] James Manyika et al., “Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills and wages,” McKinsey & Co., Nov. 28., 2017,
https://tinyurl.com/2hsuzw68.
About the Author

Holly Rosenkrantz is a Washington-based freelance journalist who writes about politics, business and health care. She is a former
White House correspondent and labor and workplace reporter and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS
News, Bloomberg News and Reuters. Her most recent CQ Researcher report was on the Senate filibuster.
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The New Labor Market February 4 2022

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Businesses facing staffing vacancies, such as this McDonald's restaurant in

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• Why are so many Americans quitting their jobs?

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