Americans are quitting their jobs in record-breaking numbers.
Nothing like this has been seen since data tracking began two decades ago. What’s going on?
Individual reasons vary, of course, but in general they’re fed up, according to labor market observers.
Robert Reich, an economist who served as Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, says workers laid off during the pandemic “don’t want to return to backbreaking or boring, low wage, sh-t jobs. Workers are burned out. 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.”
After unions were destroyed, employers held all the cards, but now the worm has turned. Mark Zandi, a prominent Wall Street economist, says, “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 … I think they are starting to flex their collective muscle.”
See story here.
It was a long time coming, but employers basically asked for it.
Low wages, bad working conditions, mistreatment, and treating employees like cost items and disposable commodities have created tremendous resentment against employers by America’s workforce.
Companies have always demanded loyalty from their workers, but used to give loyalty in return, e.g. lifetime employment, and keeping people on their payrolls during economic downturns. That’s gone. So, too, are middle-class wages, and health and retirement benefits; employees are now expected to pay for those things themselves.
Employers used to train workers, but now job seekers are expected to be job-ready, and themselves pay for the education or training that demanded by employers, with no assurance of employment after incurring crushing student debt. On top of that, many employers have inflated minimum qualifications, for example by demanding a college degree for work that doesn’t require one, adding to the expense of looking for and getting a job.
More subtle things are gone, too, such as the pride workers used to take in their work. There’s no place for craftsmen anymore; it’s all production quotas now, and managers don’t know or care about their employees, and workers often don’t even know who their managers are.
In short, nearly all the traditional incentives for working have disappeared. Business, not labor, is responsible for this. Today, the attitude of employers is that financial desperation will compel people to show up for work. They’ve miscalculated.
Add two other factors, essentially political in nature. First, a stupid immigration policy. I began reading well over 20 years ago that America was headed for a long-term labor shortage, and needed immigrants to make up the shortfall. But Republicans, supported by business, kept them out. By doing that, business shot itself in the foot.
Second, wages are the most-taxed form of income there is. This discourages work, and breeds even more resentment when wage earners read about billionaires paying no taxes at all. Republicans were behind these morale-destroying policies, too.
They’ve pushed to eliminate tax audits of high-income tax cheaters, defended offshore tax havens, and tried to eliminate taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest, inheritances, and other unearned income — which would leave wages as the only type of income being taxed. They’ve argued to replace taxes paid by the rich with consumption taxes that would disproportionately hit the lower-income classes, via such schemes as VAT (a hidden form of sales tax) and the so-called “Fair Tax” (which is anything but fair; details here).
Republicans also have opposed virtually anything that would help workers, such as workplace safety, child care credits, unemployment benefits, and even food stamps and medical insurance for the working poor.
In short, working for a living is saddled with disincentives. And work isn’t respected or rewarded.
Our culture pays lip service to the virtues of hard work, but it’s only lip service. In our system, it’s not hard work that brings success, but gaming the system. Many of today’s U.S. billionaires made their money from financial manipulation, not starting companies and creating jobs. Not a few of them made their fortunes by destroying companies and eliminating jobs.
And then you have employers’ shoddy hiring practices. Many people apply for jobs and never hear back. What happened to basic courtesy? If someone applies for a job, don’t they at least deserve an answer? Other applicants are left in limbo by repetitive interviews that never seem to end, or are subjected to interviewing tricks that seem designed to trip them up or eliminate them. Who wants to work for an employer like that? Then there’s various kinds of discrimination: Race, gender, age, etc.
The upshot is that most workers think most employers are assholes. Is it really surprising that a growing number of people have grown tired of employers’ games and chucked looking for work? Can anyone blame them?
Employers could get away with it when jobs were scarce and workers were needy. They can’t anymore, now that labor is scarce. America has treated its workers poorly for a long time, and the chickens are coming home to roost.
There are many examples, but here’s one that’s timely and pertinent: Truck drivers. From long-haul to local delivery, drivers have been forced to work long hours, sometimes off the clock, are poorly paid and uncompensated for high fuel costs, and have numerous other unaddressed complaints. Guess what? Goods are piling up on docks because of a driver shortage. That shortage didn’t happen over the last few months, or because of the pandemic; it’s been decades in the making.
For things like this, businesses and employers have no one to blame but themselves. They also now have a lot of work to do to rebuild the trust and loyalty of workers they so carelessly and heedlessly discarded.