It is NOT the Great Resignation...yet!

The Great Resignation.? Very catch to be sure.? Catchy but wrong.

?When you hear 4.3 million people quit their job in December and 4.5 million quit in November do you jump and point and say “The Great Resignation”?? When you hear that the recent months were the highest ever recorded in the history of the US, should we say, “wow that’s a Great Resignation”? Because that seems to be what many in the media are doing.

?The Great Resignation sounds cool and fit into a narrative of workers gaining power back from companies in a shifting supply and demand relationship.? After all, there are a record number of job openings, we are 5 million workers short of our pre-pandemic levels and the absolute number of people quitting is, again, a record.

Or is it?? The first thing I ask when 4.3 million people Quit in December is, “well how many usually Quit in December”?? What if I told you it was 3.6 million people?? Suddenly the Recent number doesn’t seem so momentous.? Is it still a Great Resignation???

The answer is maybe.

As those that have read my book, The End of Jobs, know, I like to look at history and data before I draw any conclusion about the future of work.?

In 2017 about 38 million people quit. In 2018 it was 40 million people and in 2019 it was 42 million.? This is all very important because in 2020, when would expect this growth to possibly continue (or at least stay steady) only 36 million people quit.

That is to say we had 5.7 million fewer Quits than in 2020 then we would have expected.

Clearly during COVID many people were scared and didn’t want to leave the security of the job they had.? Or many felt strange about interviewing and then possibly starting at a place without meeting anyone in person.? Whatever the reason we had fewer people quit.? About 6 million fewer people than we would otherwise have expected to.

Now were those 5.7 million suddenly very satisfied with their jobs?? No, they were just waiting.? As the labor markets return to “normal” we would expect those 5.7 million to quit ON TOP of the normal 41 million-ish that would quit in 2021.

And now that the year is over do you know how many people will have quit in all of 2021?? You guessed it, 47 million.

So for now we do NOT have a Great Resignation, we have a catchup of the those who did not quit in 2020, quitting in 2021.

Now is it possible that there is a fundamental shift going on in the labor force?? Of course it is possible and this resignation wave we are seeing may in fact be “Great”.? Just not yet.? If this continues for another six to nine months, sign me up and let's discuss the impacts to the future of work as the supply and demand balance would seem to be undergoing a structural shift.

But for now, please stop calling this the Great resignation and instead call it what it is, the Resignation Catch Up.