The Great Resignation Is Great for Low-Paid Workers
Despite all the talk about burnout and reevaluating priorities, the soaring quits rate has little to do with white-collar jobs. It's more about lower-income people getting the chance to move up.
It’s not burnout making people quit. It’s hard work at low pay.
Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images
An estimated 3% of American workers quit their jobs in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week.2That’s the highest percentage since the BLS started keeping track two decades ago.
This elevated quit rate has been given a name, the Great Resignation, and those who advise businesses have been offering bucketloads of advice on what to do about it. If my inbox is any indication, most of this advice is focused on how to retain knowledge workers or professionals or white-collar workers or whatever it is you want to call them/us. “Unresponsive managers and a failure to develop relationships with remote workers are primarily behind the exodus,” declares one consulting firm. Another’s survey reveals that 52% of knowledge workers “are likely to quit their job if company values do not align with their own.” More than half of technology workers say they suffer from job burnout, “and those who suffer from burnout are twice more likely to quit their job than those who don’t,” finds yet another survey. And so on and on.