I think the whole resignation story is just nonsense. I am almost certain it can be explained by people being worried in 2020 so much that they sticked to whatever job they had.
Which leads to... many people quitting in 2021. Surprise! It's probably similar to the whole supply chain hickup.
I think that’s a major contributor. Anecdotally, I think burn out is another factor. Many of my co workers left, not because they would have left in 2020 anyway, but because stress and workload increased significantly. Even when the overall workload didn’t increase, many of my coworkers (including myself) were glued to our screens - working non stop into the evening, with no sense of boundaries. And for many of us, work life balance was already whack. COVID WFH just pushed it off a cliff.
I’m highly paid and enjoy the nature of my work, but every couple weeks I think about resigning. Honestly, I’m tired. I am highly paid, privileged, and have a wonderful boss, but sometimes I feel like a cog in a machine. My boss cares about me but my company just sees me as a replaceable resource. And that’s not to disparage my employer. It’s just the reality of working in corporate America.
I think it's just the reality of working for someone else, and the longer you do it the higher the chance of
> I feel like a cog in a machine
becomes. There's a lot that comes with getting older, such as hindsight. Lots of things felt different when I was first experiencing them, vs after 40 (we'll say) years of it. You see things differently, because you know more through direct experience that can't be taught.
Delegation is the cornerstone of civilization. <https://sandstorm.io/news/2015-05-05-delegation-is-the-corne...>
Have you considered exploiting work-from-home by outsourcing your job (not necessarily overseas, but to another eager body that you're able to vet face-to-face)? If you're replaceable to your company and you can find a replacement more easily and competently than your employer can—something that has to be true if the truisms that most of HN accepts are actually sound—why not replace yourself and benefit from it at the same time by skimming off the top?
1) Natural turnover that did not happen in 2020 adding to natural turnover in 2021. 2) 2021 natural turnover. 3) People (primarily women) not being able to return to work because of child and elderly care.
The reason I don’t think it’s something more than that is that other countries are not seeing a great resignation. Only the US is. And the US didn’t even have struct lockdowns unlike other countries including countries richer and poorer than the US on a per capita basis.
I think that one is key, BUT primarily because I also think that one is not likely to recede as quickly the other causes will.
I think many people with young children, where both parents worked, and one of those parents was in a relatively low wage job, realized that it actually made more financial and "mental health" sense to have that parent just quit and take care of their children full time. With as expensive as childcare is in the US, people realized "Why am I completely stressing myself out, having someone else raise my kids, when I earn X, but something in the neighborhood of .8X goes to childcare, expenses for having a job (commuting, work clothes, etc.), and taxes. I'd rather have a slightly lower standard of living without having to deal with a bullshit job and having so little time with my kids."
I believe that dynamic is one that has staying power. All of the other fantasies ("people are standing up to the man and saying they won't come back until wages increase") will face reality once people's savings run out and they realize they like having shelter and eating.
That's a super interesting fact but I don't think it so obviously points out that this is a non-event. Why would the turn from 2020 add but not in the rest of the world? Why would women go home to child/elderly care and not in the rest of the world? Pretty mysterious!
You can claim all you want that is not data, but it is and it is telling from a policy perspective. Since when have 18-34 year olds that quit been immediately removed from the workforce?
I’ll take a guess that you neither are an employer, low wage worker or government worker, because you seem pretty far removed from the reality facing the vast majority in the US.
Maybe it is significant, but even if it was the author's data provides no context to evaluate the 3.9, 3.9, 4.3 million sequence.
>> the difference between now and 2019 is that unlike 2019 those persons were either reemployed or counted as unemployed…
Are you sure? I can't find this particular statement in the article. Did I miss something?
>> now 14M Americans (aged 18-34) are immediately removed from the workforce instead of being counted as unemployed.
Again, a single number with no context literally says nothing! If I came to you and said over the last three months our quantity of X increased by 400k from 3.9M, and and the total accumulation of some subset of X was now at 14M, do you have enough information to tell if this is unusually high, low or normal behaviour for X?
1. Gets submitted to Hacker News
2. Gets voted to the front page by HN readers
It must fit with a narrative that people already are predisposed to believe. Maybe that's why the piece gets written to begin with.
People are interested in and believe there is a "Great Resignation" even though it's not happening. Why? I don't know. But I think this is the actual story - and I wish someone would write it.
But "you believe X and it's wrong" stories generally don't do well.
Yeah, I get why Time hires these kids. They fired the senior reporters to cut costs and pay peanuts to the replacements, many of whom are fresh out of college and are morally opposed to the concept of objectivity, when they see their role as advocating for some kind of justice.
Why would someone accept such a poor paying job? Because it gives them a platform. So part of their compensation is to air grievances - to "be heard". To push for justice. That sense of fulfillment on the part of the reporter is part of the compensation package.
These are the people that self-select into these jobs, as reporters who value "being heard" less will expect more cash payment. So on the labor supply side, business save money by hiring reporters who tilt more towards valuing "being heard" and "justice".
But on the demand side, facts have been commodified so much with the internet that merely the gathering of interesting data and presentation thereof is not highly valued. What is highly valued is opinion, especially outrage-inducing bias-confirming opinion. That is why you see the rise of Buzzfeed and outlets like Time are drawn into that orbit.
It's not good for our body politic, but it makes business sense.
> People are interested in and believe there is a "Great Resignation" even though it's not happening. Why?
Because the labor market is all screwed up now. Covid and the lockdowns have made it completely topsy turvy. So it's an area of intense interest, and then -- like the port situation -- people project their own bugbears onto that. So some will insist that this is some revolt of labor over capital, and they follow those stories. Others insist it's government mismanagement and follow those stories.
>So how could someone write a story with the exact opposite conclusion of what the labor force statistics say? Why would someone think lying about a "Great Resignation" is responsible, objective journalism?
It's not the opposite, though.
In fact nothing you're saying even contradicts what the article is saying. Basically your entire criticism is around what you perceive the authors intent is in writing the article, which is funny given your post.
If she had written a piece that said "the labor force may not recover from the lockdowns", then she could gather this piece of data and other pieces of data and make a case. But that's not the Great Resignation thesis.
FYI, I am not saying that we should not have good labor reporting -- now is one of the rare times when labor reporting is actually interesting. But not this Time piece. I could spend 10 minutes googling and come up with a more interesting, more fact base piece of journalism.
I think that’s been the case for many months now.
"This is the highest mass resignation the U.S. has seen since 2019, pre-pandemic, and the numbers are still rising. In June, 3.9 million quit. In July, it was another 3.9 million. In August, 4.3 million."
The [3.9M, 3.9M, 4.3M] sequence seems cherry picked. It could just be normal noise for all we know. To me this kind of argument could be easily summarized with simple data visualization, i.e. a line graph with more datapoints (expand 3 month range to a full year, stack more years for context). A histogram of monthly resignations to attach a %-ile to it would also be great, but may not be as intuitive and there's a lot of complexity involved in trying to understand significance.
The author follows the monthly resignation numbers with: "The numbers are even more notable for young workers: in September, nearly a quarter of workers ages 20 to 34 were not considered part of the U.S. workforce—some 14 million Americans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who were neither working nor looking for work."
You interpret this as them saying 14M is a big number, but I think based on the preceding sentence, it's actually trying to say 14M is "more notable" than the ~3.9M in the preceding argument. I kind of think this is the case, as its a really common data mistake I see in articles: mixing up units. In this case of course, out-of-labor/month cannot be compared to cumulative out-of-labor-young/month.
That being said, I disagree with you on your attribution of this to activist journalism. And for context, I'll just say that unlike the vast majority of HN, I actually have a lot of respect for most modern journalism, and think most people complaining about journalism aren't comparing state of affairs in countries like China/Russia/Sri-Lanka without press freedom.
My more generous interpretation is that another underlying cause for these kinds of mistakes is simply a lack of familiarity with math, and especially statistics. A journalist with good intentions can still make these kinds of errors if they aren't familiar with good practise in statistics.
Finally, I just wanted to say, there are quite a few journalists that are pretty good at data-based journalism. I think Kevin Drum[1] is a particularly good example, since he'll often refute other articles by digging up more data and illustrating how marginal some percieved effect is in context.
ETA: Fixed unit confusion critique mistake, it's not resignation but out-of-labor.
> The new data released by Reykdal's office show that schools statewide lost 470 employees due to the mandate, including about 188 teachers.[1]
> A total of 121 WSF (Ferry workers) employees who chose not to comply with the mandate were fired. As a result, the fleet has been reduced, creating disruptions to the schedule.[2]
> SEATTLE — Seattle Public Schools (SPS) will suspend more than 100 bus routes starting Monday, Oct. 18, due to a shortage of bus drivers that's been exacerbated by the state's COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
> Approximately 142 routes out of the district's 600 total bus routes will be suspended and impact around 6,700 students. However, SPS said because of the irregularity of ridership it's unknown exactly how many students will be impacted.[3]
> After Monday’s deadline for state employees to provide proof of vaccination or face being fired, the Washington State Patrol announced on Tuesday the number of employees it has lost due to the vaccine mandate.
> WSP spokesman Chris Loftis said in a news release that as of the close of business on Monday, 127 employees left employment “for varying reasons and in varying ways.”[4]
I could go on with more examples from that one state, and they're all from the last 2 weeks so very recent. We are firing people - police, hospital workers, fire fighters, bus drivers, etc. - at a time when we already have quite a shortage of those same workers in those professions. A lot of the current people working in those professions are working overtime, to pick up the slack from not having enough workers. They are getting burned out with the additional workload, and grows by the day as this drags on with no relief in sight. Now we take away even more, and are choosing to do so, putting an even greater burden on those who remain. If you live in Seattle, these changes have likely altered your life or someone you know. For instance, maybe you now have no way to get your child to school and have to take more time off of work to be able to do that. Or you sat waiting to get your car across the bay to get to work, but the ferry never came. Or you're waiting on hold for 911 for several minutes instead of seconds while an emergency is in progress, and once you reach them told it will be 15 minutes before someone can get to you. Or you're hearing gunshots in your neighborhood, and that never happened before as crime continues to skyrocket to levels not seen in 50 years. Or you're having to wait even longer for medical treatment while going to the hospital. All of this as a direct result of firing people who aren't "complying." It only takes a few percent from each industry to get fired to really muck up an already fledgling interconnected complex system.
This is just one state. The national mandates are set for next month in November, so we will be seeing more of this except on a national level.
We all have our personal opinions on the mandate. We also know human nature, but I think we have been ignoring it. We know, as we have seen, not everyone will "comply." Right or wrong, it's a fact, and nothing will change it if there is a mandate. If you think there are shortages of products, and food, and transportation delays now, just hold on and hold on tight. It doesn't matter if they are right or wrong, because it will happen and affect you just the same. I don't get the logic. I believe this will be more detrimental in the long run than what it was supposedly trying to prevent.
[1] https://www.king5.com/article/news/education/teachers-school...
[2] https://www.islandsweekly.com/news/unvaccinated-wsf-employee...
[3] https://www.king5.com/article/news/education/seattle-public-...
[4] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/127-employees-leav...
It's a 'good exemplar' of criticism that, most of all, fits perfectly in the cultural trends and moment, pressing all the 'right' buttons, triggering all the currently well-conditioned emotions, like a great piece of marketing.
First, let's take a look at the statistics cited in the piece which support the main thesis (the whole article is built on two facts):
* highest quit rate since .... 2019! 2019, wow, that was like ancient history. That makes this historic!
* 14 million (what a big number!) of 18-34 not in labor force. Isn't that number so big? OMG, look at how big that number is!
Whereas the data says both the total not in labor force number and the "do not want job" number has declined for all groups except those 55 and over![1] where it has slightly increased. Actually the WSJ got this right when it said the labor story of the day is people (primarily small business owners) taking early retirement. But then again, that story was written by an experienced journalist.
That's it. That's all the labor force participation statistics she cites in support of this "Great Resignation". The rest are a series of grievances about how bad people have it and how they're really not gonna take it anymore! Well, OK, then.
So how could someone write a story with the exact opposite conclusion of what the labor force statistics say? Why would someone think lying about a "Great Resignation" is responsible, objective journalism?
The problem with these type of activist, grievance-based, emptional pieces is that they are not news (describing how the world is) they are advocacy (describing how the world should be). And when you blur those lines, truth and engagement with reality is the first casualty. Raisa obviously thinks a great resignation is warranted and so just pretends that it's happening. As if her own intuition and circle of friends were more reliable than labor force statistics. So she disengages with the real world and starts pretending that it is actually occurring. She is LARPing the news!
And you often see this on the part of frustrated activists. The clues are phrases like "people are starting to wake up", without any actual data. It's perfectly understandable that this happens - lots of people have been secluded, isolated, and are beginning to lose it - but when it seeps into news reporting, it's very dangerous.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea38.htm