Is the great resignation happening?

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From our ObsessionCareeringBetween the networking, the interviewing, the

negotiating, and the onboarding, moving on or up can feel like a job of its own.By
Cassie WerberReporterPublished 1 minute agoThe “great resignation” can mean a lot
of things, from an exodus of exhausted parents from the workforce, to a widespread
ideological movement of adults away from jobs they find meaningless, problematic,
or inflexible, and into… something else, as yet unclear.But is it actually
happening?Since the term was coined in May 2021 by Anthony Klotz, associate
professor at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, its use in the media has
skyrocketed. A search on Lexis Nexis, which collates media mentions, reveals 5,493
uses of the term in newspapers, newswires, press releases, and blogs since it first
came into being.Yet for those seeking to move jobs, or unhappy in their current
role, jumping into the void might still feel daunting, even impossible. Desperate
to find meaning in the chaos of covid, are we just parroting a fictitious narrative
of coherence when we talk about a “great resignation?” And can data help us see
more clearly?What data support the great resignation?The main data point cited in
support of the great resignation narrative is the US quits rate, which reached an
all-time high of 3% in September 2021, and has since dropped slightly. The
trajectory of that index, produced by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, looks like
this:There are several things to note. First, 2021 does indeed represent an all-
time high quit rate, but it’s still only 3%. An average of three in 100 people quit
their jobs that month, and they didn’t all drop out of the workforce.Second, the
quit line has been trending upwards since a low of 1.2% in post-financial-crisis
September 2009, as the economy has strengthened. There was a notable dip during the
early pandemic and then, arguably, a surge of pent-up quitting once economies
started to re-open. Third, as business school lecturer Jay L Zagorsky points out in
The Conversation, these data have only been collected since December 2000.Zagorsky
also notes that some sectors, like hospitality, have much higher quit rates than
others, which is pushing up the average.There are other data that support the idea
that a lot more people than normal are leaving their jobs—but mostly in the US, and
even there it’s by no means cut-and-dried. The Economist points out that there’s
more evidence in the UK and the US, but elsewhere the data don’t support the
narrative. The new Economics Observatory says even in the UK, the evidence is thin.
It points out that although UK quit rates were rising in the fall of 2021, that’s
normal for the season.Job vacancies are high in both the US and UK, meaning that
people who do quit might be better able to find a new job—depending on their
sector. But it doesn’t mean they are quitting.Do CEOs think we’re seeing a great
resignation?One way of gauging how seriously company leaders are taking a trend is
how much they mention it in earnings calls. This doesn’t mean they agree with it,
but could be a useful barometer of how much it’s on their minds.According to a
search of earnings call transcripts on Sentieo, no one mentioned the phrase “great
resignation” until July 2021. Mentions reached a high in November 2021, when the
phrase came up in 71 transcripts. (It may also have come up multiple times in those
calls, but Sentieo only provides the number of documents the phrase has been used
in, not how many times it’s been used.)Looking at the uses of the phrase in the
transcripts themselves, CEOs and other leaders are often saying that the “so-
called” great resignation, in their words, is not affecting their business
specifically; rather, they might be hearing about it in the media.Is the great
resignation a fact or a fairytale?The Economics Observatory writes of the UK: “It
may be that as the economy opens up, with the renewed push to end home working in
early 2022, that there will be a new chapter of great resignations.” But, it says,
there isn’t enough evidence right now to support a “good story.”If the US quit rate
doesn’t rise any higher, we might have to abandon the notion that the great
resignation is happening even there, and look for another interpretation of the
confusing times through which we’re living.Are you a top company for remote
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