Although recession fears and missed earnings expectations have led to job cuts in some industries, the Great Resignation is still going strong: as of the beginning of June 2022, Americans were still quitting their jobs at record rates, and data from the a global survey by Price Waterhouse Coopers found that up to 20% of workers worldwide were planning to quit their jobs by the end of 2022. Further, the Great Resignation is starting to spread to sectors like academia, which have long been believed to be more stable (however far that belief is from the reality of most of the sector’s workers). With all that in mind, we are back with the second half of our Great Resignation episode. This time around we’re talking about factors that influence quitting, lying flat, labor costs, worker-management relations, and where we go from here. We hope you enjoy!
Before we get to the show notes: We have a shiny new home! Come over to catch up on all of those older episodes that we’ve mentioned (like the ones about money or [side] hustle culture), listen to new ones as they’re released, and read articles and blog posts from the intersection of money, society, and everyday life.
Notes and bonus content are below the cut:
Mentioned on the show
Toxic work culture and the Great Resignation (Sloan Review; MIT)
Pew Research survey on the reasons that people quit their jobs
On lying flat : Chinese millennials are opting out of a lot of the trappings of “adulthood” (The Daily Beast)
The rise of the anti-work movement (BBC Worklife)
A Chinese high court has ruled that 9-9-6 culture should be illegal. What does this mean for workers? (TechCrunch)
Cost of labor: what is it? (Investopedia)
The Great Resignation shows that managers need unions, too (New Republic)
Bonus content
The Great Resignation is older than the pandemic, and its causes are complex (Harvard Business Review)
Why do we work too much? (The New Yorker)
Who is Max Weber and what is the Protestant Work Ethic? [BBC 4 ; Video]
An episode of the Freakonomics podcast on whether or not “The Protestant Work Ethic” actually exists
Why the “future of work” may be more of the same (The Atlantic)
New business applications in the US, which are tracked by the US Census Bureau, are still at historically high levels (Small Business Labs)
Economists are rethinking the prediction that “robots are going to take our jobs.” Is it time for the rest of us to do the same? (The Economist, The New Yorker)
From the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives: answers to frequently asked questions about cooperatives
