More 'fed up' workers quitting jobs in US

They are quitters — and Mary Waters is one of them.

On a Saturday morning in June, she pulled up in front of a grocery store where she worked in St. Louis, Missouri.

"I couldn't walk into such a dehumanizing, toxic place where we're all sort of just, like, walking past each other, not even saying 'hi'. The days would blur together,'' she told National Public Radio.

She drove out of the parking lot and didn't look back. Since then, millions in the United States have done the same thing.

From front-line workers to senior executives, some 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Oct 12. It was the highest number of people who have left their jobs since the bureau began tracking such data in 2000. The turnover rate was 2.9 percent of the US workforce, according to the bureau.

Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M, told Bloomberg in May that the "Great Resignation'' was coming.

Over the past year, Klotz said, there had been an accumulation of stalled resignations, realization about work-life balance and new passion projects — all motivators for workers to exit the 9-to-5 workplace grind.

There is evidence that people have been thinking during the pandemic about family and how their lives are going, and they have had some epiphanies and decided to make some changes, Klotz told Newsweek magazine. This could involve deciding to leave the workforce and stay home with family, to start a business or pursue a hobby, or perhaps to retire, he said.

Bureau of Labor Statistics show that around 892,000 workers left jobs at restaurants, bars and hotels in August, up 21 percent from July. The number of retail workers quitting rose 6 percent. In the healthcare sector, where workers have close contact with people, 534,000 quit, and fear of COVID-19 reportedly played a role.

Meanwhile, there are roughly 10.4 million job openings, but the 7.7 million people who remain unemployed aren't seeking the jobs, leaving businesses struggling to find workers — even with higher hourly wages.

The bureau's data doesn't specify where those who quit are ending up or why. But among the reasons for quitting cited by economists are COVID-19 health risks, early retirements, increased care duties, built-up savings and friction with employers.

Most white-collar workers in the US were forced to work at home during the pandemic. Many of them discovered they liked it and want to keep doing it. Several major companies, such as Twitter, have announced permanent work-from-home policies.

But some labor experts say Americans are simply burned out — and emboldened by the labor market.

"(Employees) don't want to return to backbreaking or boring, low-wage jobs," Robert Reich, former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, told Time magazine.

"They're fed up. They're fried. In the wake of so much hardship and illness and death during the past year, they're not going to take it anymore."

Reich said the number of people out of work is the equivalent of a nationwide walkout.

"People are quitting and they're not taking jobs," he said. "That's tantamount to a strike. American workers have, in effect, called a general strike."

Vienna Chen, a product manager at a gaming company in Sunnyvale, California, recently resigned after she got an offer for the same job at a larger company. She had been seeking jobs in the past few months, and she found more jobs with higher salaries available now. Her old job's annual salary was $60,000 and now her new job pays $40,000 more.

"My old company wants all the employees to get back to office. We were first required to get back to office in July, but it was postponed later to September and now it was postponed again to January," she told China Daily. "I want to find a permanent remote working position so I can live wherever I want. It is so expensive here in the Bay Area. I'm considering moving to Southern California.

"The cost of living has been going up. I think now is a good time to find a job with better pay and better benefit since there are more job openings in the market than the pre-pandemic era," she said.

A report released on Friday by job search site Glassdoor found that mentions of "burnout" in online job reviews have increased 100 percent over the course of the pandemic.

Nick Bunker, economic research director for North America at jobs site Indeed, told The Washington Post that the number of workers quitting reflected their options in the current economic market.

"This really elevated rate of people quitting their job is a sign that workers have lots of confidence and they have relatively stronger bargaining positions than they've had in the past," he said.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told Time: "For at least two generations, workers have been on their back heels. We are now seeing a labor market that is tight, and prospects are becoming increasingly clear that it's going to remain tight. It's now going to be a workers' market, and they're empowered. I think they are starting to flex their collective muscle."

Klotz told Insider that the trend may have a silver lining, forcing companies not only to raise wages and increase benefits but to offer more flexibility to an in-person workforce.

The data also indicates that expanded benefits from the federal government were not a significant factor in keeping people out of work, because more are quitting ?jobs now than before the expanded benefits ended in September.

Contact the writers at aiheping@chinadailyusa.com