About 4.3 million Americans left their jobs in August. “Quits”, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls them, are rising in almost every industry, especially in retail, food services, and hospitality.
We are living in what labor economist Lawrence Katz calls “a once-in-a-generation ‘take this job and shove it’ moment.”
Katz says there’s no perfect way of measuring what’s driving it but “what we do see is a lot of people asking about getting remote work, for example, and a lot of people questioning low-wage, high-turnover situations, and employers starting to respond, but pretty slowly relative to the expectations of workers.”
And while the economist thinks we still can’t know if it’s temporary or not, New York Times bestselling author, Kurt Eichenwald, believes it’s been long in the making.
In August, the number of workers who quit their job in a single month broke the all-time U.S. record
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The Great Resignation is, in fact, great
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In a recent Twitter thread, Eichenwald theorized that younger generations no longer have any faith in the idea of “the American dream” because for so many, it’s become too far out of reach.
The term “American Dream” was coined by writer and historian James Truslow Adams in his 1391 book The Epic of America. According to Adams, it’s a promise that “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.
But the idea of the American Dream has been around for much longer. You could probably even build a case that it’s inscribed in the Declaration of Independence, which says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
But Eichenwald claimed that Americans no longer have the inspiration of working toward a better future for themselves. Because there is none.
And bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald thinks it was long in the making
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So what happens now? While companies are scrambling to keep and attract workers, they are offering retention bonuses, allowing employees to work remotely forever, and providing new benefits to support workers’ personal and professional development.
Some are also saying they’re drawing up policies to help workers recover from burnout, whether it is a sabbatical, closing the business for a week, or shrinking the workweek from five days to four.
“Companies have to bend,” recruiting consultant Abby Kohut, founder, and president of Staffing Symphony, which focuses on the pharmaceutical industry, told CNBC.
Eichenwald’s thread sparked an interesting discussion
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