Time—I know, I know—has an article on the Great Resignation and in particular how young people are quitting their jobs. In some respects, the article is the usual Time silliness but it does make several interesting points.
There appears to be two main type of quitters:
- Those fighting burnout and looking for better pay and benefits
- Those looking to find themselves and seek work outside the traditional \(9–5\) environment.
Those in the first group typically work in areas such as hospitality where they have to deal with rude patrons for low wages and few or no benefits. Many of them say that they’re not going back until wages increase.
Those in the second group tend to be leaving more white collar jobs. They’re engineers, healthcare workers, those working in marketing, and the like. Their big issue is burnout. Many report working long hours in conditions that all of us in the computer industry have experienced at one time or another.
The other aspect of all this is remote work. Another group that is leaving their jobs is childcare workers so many mothers are being forced to work from home. Those mothers have no choice but to leave jobs that can’t accommodate their need to care for their children themselves.
The article is worth a read to get an idea of what’s going on with the Great Resignation and why it’s happening. Time, of course, doesn’t mention what role, if any, expanded government unemployment subsidies play in this. Here’s one semi-humorous take on that aspect:
millennials: what if we just never went back to work?
everyone else including zoomers and sane millennials: what if we didn’t pay you?
— Mike Solana (@micsolana) November 4, 2021