Thread by @DKThomp

I wrote about the myths of the "Great Resignation"

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

1. It's not about "quitting", but low-wage job-switching (ht @JHWeissmann)

2. It actually has very little to do with professional burnout

3. It's more about early retirement than news reports suggest

(1) The Great Resignation isn't actually about what most people think of as "resignations."

The low-wage service-sector economy is experiencing the equivalent of “free agency” in a professional sports league. That makes it more like the Big Switch than the Big Quit.

Restaurants and hotels have been hardest hit by the Great Resignation.

So, are they shrinking?

No! Accommodations and food services added ~2 million employees in 2021! That's almost one out of every three net new jobs this year. They're raising wages and scrambling to hire.

(2) The Great Resignation isn't about professional burnout.

Burnout is real. Quits are real. But the increase in self-reported burnout is happening in white-collar industries where workers are *less* likely to quit their jobs.

https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1467496164929024005

As you can see here, "quits" (BLS term) have increased in professional and business services, a big white-collar super-sector.

But I've indexed this chart to Feb 2020 to show that accommodations and food service quits have increased 4 times more during the pandemic.

(3) If you think of quits or resignations as semi-permanent, the Great Resignation didn't happen in 2021. It happened in 2020—among seniors.

The participation rate of 65+ has plummeted.

But let's call that what it is. It's not "resignation." It's early "retirement."

The Great Resignation isn’t really about what most ppl call "quitting." And not really about burnout, like the media says.

It's a free agency period for low-wage workers switching jobs for money, plus a moderate surge of early retirements in a pandemic.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…