The final stretch of 2023 claims an unexpected victim. This is the great resignation, this supposedly irreversible and unstoppable upswing that was supposed to destroy the foundations of corporate capitalism. An earthquake whose first epicenter was in the United States a few years ago, which generated continuous aftershocks and which, until a few months ago, was exported to the European community, including Spain.
According to Investopedia, the international bible of financial investors, the great resignation is now a thing of the past. This is a thesis that is already widespread in the academic environment and is supported by media outlets such as Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg, Quartz, The Week or The Economist. The New York Times gives him full credit in a concise article by Ben Casselman
Even the man considered the father of the concept, Anthony Klotz, professor of economic management at University College London, is willing to acknowledge that there is “no trace” of the catastrophe of unforeseeable consequences that he predicted at the time. Everything indicates that the labor market has been “behaving as if the pandemic had never existed” since last spring. Klotz coined the phrase “Great Resignation” in May 2021, but today he suggests that this mass exodus of professionals willing to quit their jobs to live fuller and more fulfilling lives marks the consolidation of the new post-Covid 19-normality has not survived.
As usual
In October of this year, according to Fortune editor Chris Morris, the percentage of Americans who quit their jobs was at a level “very similar to 2019,” at about 0.1%, which experts consider “little significant.” Definitely describe it as completely normal. It seems obvious that the great desertion of those who felt neglected or mistreated in today's trenches has come to an end.
Just a year and a half ago, in June 2022, Beyoncé released what social media describes as her Bolshevik song “Break My Soul,” the anthem of the Great Renunciation. In it, as CNN Business editor Lucy Bayly tells it, she urged her fans not to accept the discouraging mediocrity of jobs without prospects. If your routine is destroying your nerves, overwhelming and exhausting you, keeping you awake and separating you from your loved ones, don't hesitate: stop.
Today the topic sounds even more opportunistic and childish than it did back then. Apparently Beyoncé read diagonally a number of articles in the progressive press promoting the Great Restructuring thesis, the supposed systemic change that companies would be forced to make in order to mitigate the effects of the Great Renunciation.
When our employees flock to HR to tell us they've had enough and are quitting, we need to stop the bleeding by offering raises, flexible hours, reduced workloads, more freedom and better treatment. Respectful Many employers back then viewed themselves more or less resignedly as considerate and “humane”. Mark Lobosco was a lecturer at the LinkedIn Trends Observatory and proposed “a profound reinvention of company culture.”
The years of mass exodus
None of that happened. CNN's Samantha Delouya says that in the end, as usual, “order was restored.” Entrepreneurs weathered the storm by accelerating their automation and digitalization programs, thereby reducing their dependence on moody and unpredictable people to some extent. Today, says Delouya, “they hardly have to worry about their employees leaving over time.” As the fog of battle clears, “what was emerging as one of the key medium-term impacts of the pandemic is being left behind”..
In 2021, 47.7 million people in the United States quit their jobs, in many cases citing chronic work stress [burnout], “Demotivation, dissatisfaction with life, work-life balance problems or changed priorities,” as Delouya explains. This was the highest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began collecting data in 2001.
A new all-time high was reached in 2022: 50.5 million resignations. We now know that the desertion impulse peaked in the summer of that year, between July and September, and coincided, if only coincidentally, with the commercial release of Break My Soul. During this period, around six million resignations were registered every month. But from October onwards the trend began to change. And there was not the soft landing that some analysts had predicted, but rather a sudden return to normality that was already apparent in the spring of this year.
Congratulations on the signing.Camerique Archive (Getty Images)
Quitting a job is not that easy. Many of those who did so between late 2020 and mid-2022 felt driven by a strong societal and generational current that had been given wings by the pandemic. They believed that they were acting in accordance with their moment in life and the “new” values they had acquired or consolidated during the lockdown. They sought a “different” life, who knows whether it was a better job or a new starting point. And they were confident that they were setting off at the right time and with well-loaded saddlebags.
Our deserters
Among those who have made such a decision in Spain, in an environment that has little to do with the traditional vitality and strength of the American labor market, ICON has identified Marc A., a 43-year-old illustrator and designer. In 2022, Marc quit his wage job at a design studio in Barcelona To as a self-employed person and move to the Pyrenean town of Lleida, with a few hundred inhabitants: “It was a leap into the void,” he admits, “because I “I'm going to become self-employed after I turn 40, which most likely means I'll never have a payroll again, and that's a pretty dicey prospect.”
He did it, he explains, because the pandemic convinced him how unsatisfactory his life was, “in a city that I liked less and less, with which I had lost emotional connection” and led a routine that he called Slave found it “absurd and absurd.” The idea of settling into a “calmer and healthier” environment and becoming his own boss began to become seductive when several people around him simply began to give up: “I chose one decided a different way of life and did it with all of them.” the consequences. Perhaps the trickiest point of my personal rescue plan is that at this rate I'll be retiring as a freelancer, so it's very likely I'll be left with a ridiculous pension unless I find a way to supplement it. correct”.
Magda López, 29 years old, joined the Great Renunciation to “get off the wheel” that she believes she got into too soon: “I had been doing more or less shitty jobs since I was 19 and had no time to do them.” Training.” or think about how I wanted to manage the rest of my life.” Now he's studying audiovisual production, alternating this with sporadic (“and fairly poorly paid”) freelance work.
Magda is among the meager 14.9% of Spaniards under 30 who do not live with their parents. She had settled into the apartment of her partner, who was several years older than her and in a “slightly more comfortable” economic situation, but her commitment to a “sincere and profound” life change led her to leave that relationship behind as well . Today she lives in a shared apartment with two childhood friends, a makeshift and rather “precarious” solution, but which she finds bearable because she describes herself as “disciplined and very frugal,” rather than being used to “having a hell of a time.” . ” She knows Beyoncé’s song and finds it “abhorrently frivolous that an unrealistic billionaire like her allows herself to give her followers condescending advice on how they should live their lives.” After all, Beyoncé is “the epitome of those who never have to think about it “To give up something.”
Finally, Laia P., a 37-year-old translator and interpreter and separated mother of twins, also turned her back on a payroll and a “more than decent” salary in the first months of 2022, when the seeds of resignation seemed to be emerging float.float. in the area: “Giving birth was a traumatic experience for me,” he tells us, “but it also gave me a new perspective on how I want to live my life.” “I'm no longer willing to submit to a routine, which keeps me away from my children most of the day and forces me to lock myself in an office and live very intensely with people who contribute nothing to me on a human level.”
The company where I worked tried to adapt to this changing perspective on life: “I recognize that they have been flexible and reasonable with me. They offered me a reduction in working hours, options for arbitration and the option of alternating attendance and teleworking. But my tolerance for working as an employee in a large company had plummeted. In the end they told me: “Nothing is enough for you, we think the problem is that you now have a lot less desire to work.” And I think they were right. So we agreed to be laid off and now I’m translating back home and taking part in interviews, conferences and meetings from time to time, as I did in the first few years of my professional life.”
The outcome of this new lifestyle, motivated by “a profound change in priorities,” seems very positive: “I am definitely disappointed that the Great Renunciation was nothing more than a false alarm, especially in Spain, a country with a very high level.” Unemployment rate and, consequently, conservative-minded workers who are willing to live in almost any way possible to maintain their wages.” Laia hoped that “the impact of the pandemic and the life lesson it meant for many of us “would go deeper and have a greater capacity for transformation,” but in the end “reality prevailed and the vast majority ultimately chose to live more or less as before, perhaps even with fewer illusions and hopes.”
Stand up
Madeline Klass, industry trends expert at the corporate newsletter Hierology, believes that the end of the era of Great Resignation “most likely occurred as early as the end of 2022 and became more than clear in May of this year.” However, the New York Times did not announce the “event” until July, and “it is already known,” ironically Klass, “that things will not come to an end until the New York Times confirms on its pages that they have happened. “.
A strike at the Spratts food factory in east London over a dispute over a new “timing system”. October 1945, what a time that was. Mirrorpix (Mirrorpix via Getty Images)
Klass added that the final resolution of what she described as an “anomalous” situation was still good news. In his opinion, the mass exodus and the resulting labor shortages from which companies began to suffer led to a “remarkable strengthening of workers who were able to demand salary increases, flexibility and incentives”. With the restoration of the “natural” order of labor relations, employers are regaining the initiative, but Klass believes that they will only retain it if “they continue to offer their skilled workers conditions that make it worthwhile for them to stay.” That is, This dynamic of ups and downs would come to an end for the time being if an optimal equilibrium point had been reached, at least in the United States.
Writing in The Week, Brigid Kennedy attributes the change in third place to “growing pessimism among workers about the medium-term development of the labor market”. The United States and the planet as a whole are experiencing a time of uncertainty and volatility. “Quiting a job is a lot less attractive today than it was a year and a half ago.” Jumping into the pool is a lot more worrisome when you realize there may be very little water in it. In the game of chairs in the job market, explains ADP consulting analyst Nela Richardson, “the best positions appear to be occupied right now,” so there are fewer and fewer practical incentives to stand up when the music is playing.
Jo Constantz assumes in Bloomberg that the era of large-scale labor migration is over, that a sedentary lifestyle for work seems to be the best option again for the vast majority and that it is time to look back on the events of the past to “learn” from it. . the last three years. For Constantz it is clear that the era of unconditional dedication to work is behind us. Even today, one in two workers would consider quitting their job if their company forced them to spend more time in the office, and that's a lesson that can't be ignored.
As much as the most qualified Millennials and Zs are concerned about developing their careers, they are not as willing as those over 40 to submit to stifling work routines that are incompatible with a “normal” life. Constantz believes that the companies that best understand this mental paradigm shift among their employees will be the ones that have the easiest time attracting and retaining talent, and therefore the most competitive.
The temptation to get off the treadmill may have gone out of fashion, but the job market is now dominated by a generation that is willing to work to live but may no longer live to work. If this were true, the Great Retirement would have passed into history, but not without leaving a deep legacy, the appropriate distribution of which workers and companies have had to negotiate in recent years. Maybe it's not the major shakeup that volunteers like Mark Lobosco were talking about a few months ago, but it could end up leading to something similar.
You can follow ICON on Facebook, XInstagram, or subscribe to the newsletter here.