The Great Resignation is a socio-cultural phenomenon that is baffling researchers and reporters and causing no small degree of anxiety among employers. Odds are, you know someone who has taken part in this movement by moving on from their job recently, perhaps, you’ve made a transition yourself. As we explore in this episode, the reasons that people are leaving their jobs are complex and really get to the heart of why we work in the first place. Also in this episode: life updates, an inside view of what happens when accountants fire their clients, and we’re working doing some home (read: website) renovations. It’s good to be back!
NB: This one got long, so there’s going to be a part two.
As always, links are available under the cut.
Mentioned in the show:
Flipping the News
The Trump organization gets fired by its accountant, who also declared all of the financial statements it prepared for the organization “unreliable”
2 New York District Attorneys working on the Trump fraud investigation in Manhattan have resigned (from the New York Times)
The Guardian’s reporting on the SwissLeaks scandal. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has created a hub collecting data pertaining to the scandal by person and country as well as reporting from the international group of organizations and journalists who worked on this story.
Main Event
Why do we work? (from Quartz)
Meaning at work is so important that 9 out of 10 people would take a pay cut to do a job that they find fulfilling (from Harvard Business Review)
The Professor Who Predicted This (from Texas A&M Today, contains a profile of Anthony C. Klotz and his insights into possible reasons for the Great Resignation)
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Quit rates (overall and by region and industry)
A couple of articles on long COVID and returning to work (or not)/ the economic distress faced by those struggling with long COVID [Time/The Washington Post]. Also of interest: Ed Yong’s reporting for The Atlantic on how immunocompromised and/or disabled people are being overlooked as things (including offices) open back up.
Lack of childcare and the Great Resignation (Washington Post)
Research from the Columbia School of Professional Studies finds that misalignment between an employer and their employees’ personal values is increasingly a big deal for workers.
The Black Death and Labor Shortages (from VICE)
Lying Flat and Anti-work: a brief intro (Forbes). More about this, especially about lying flat, to come in part 2.
Bonus:
A look at the connection between pandemics and socio-economic uprisings in general (via the Conversation).
From the British Library: Basic background information about peasants in England and the Peasants Revolt of 1381, which followed the Black Death.
