It's origin is quite clear: disillusioned employees don't quit their job, but instead do the bare minimum needed to not get fired.
Now it apparently means anything from that to people who still work very hard and sometimes do overtime, but aren't willingly working weekends and 50 hour overtimes just to please their corporate overlords anymore.
Sometimes that has a race or class component but I think it most often is simply that it conveniently shifts the blame for poor performance. That project didn’t fail because incompetent managers confused Accenture’s suits with competence, or because the management layers are only good at playing politics, but because the staff “quiet quit” (i.e. spent their unpaid time with their friends and families rather than gifting it to their boss).
The United States has a lot of people who either are in management or self-identify with the people at the top so a business writer can have a very easy career writing “it’s not you, it’s them” pieces like this. Our retirement system also means you have a large audience of people who have spare time, depend on stock market returns for their income, and are thus far more willing to think other people should have harsher working conditions than they personally did.
That's not how I understood it so maybe it isn't that clear. My understanding was that it was doing the work you were contracted to do. So if you were salaried to work 40 hours a week then you wouldn't do 50 or read your emails at home.
Hence the new term.
> “It’s actually young people, 25 to 45, who used to work very long hours, who are now cutting back,” he said, noting, “it’s all men—not women. "
Is it really fair to call that "quiet quitting"?