“The big resignation is that people say, ‘Whatever the situation, I want something better,'” Patrecia Ming Buckley told CNN Business. The 35-year-old, based in Sydney, made the decision to quit her job at the management consultancy EY last August.
A December survey of around 1,000 workers in Singapore by Indeed job board found that almost half of the respondents were unsure whether they would stay in their current position for the next six months. Almost a quarter intend to leave their employer before the end of the first half of this year. LinkedIn data for January showed a notable increase in the number of workers switching jobs in Spain, the Netherlands and Italy compared to early 2021.
And in a study of workers covering Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Japan and France commissioned by messaging company Slack, openness to looking for a new job has risen every quarter since June.
“It’s this recalibration that people have had, where they’re rethinking the role of work in their lives,” said Brian Elliott, senior vice president at Slack, who leads the Future Forum initiative. “They’re rethinking — not just in terms of things like pay — but of course things like flexibility, focus and balance.”
where is the wave
Anthony Klotz, a professor of business administration at Texas A&M University who is credited with coining the phrase “The Great Resignation,” identified trends in late 2020 that he believed could accelerate a transformation of the U.S. job market.
There was a backlog of layoffs as people largely stayed put in the early stages of the pandemic. Reports of burnout were widespread. People asked big questions about the meaning of life while sitting on big piles of savings. And there was potential for friction as those who had been working remotely and were now prioritizing flexibility were being called back into the office.
The theory was spot on: In 2021, 47.8 million workers in the United States voluntarily resigned their jobs, the highest number since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting full-year data in 2001. The number of layoffs remained elevated in January and February this year.
In some cases, people left the labor market to look after children or elderly relatives. Labor shortages in industries like retail and hospitality increased demand for labor and encouraged people to take advantage of a competitive market for a role with better benefits or better pay. People in desk jobs, fed up with the long pandemic times and Zoom meetings, were beginning to decide they’d had enough.
“I’ve worn way too many hats for one person,” said Bobbi Conclin, who quit her job in purchasing and sales at Cintas last month. The 25-year-old, who lives in New Jersey, said she burned out from working 10- to 12-hour days and started a new job at an e-commerce company days later.
The factors Klotz identified are not unique to the United States. However, there has been heated debate as to whether the Great Resignation has arrived in other labor markets.
“We see a ‘major reshuffle’ rather than a ‘major resignation,'” said Josh Frydenberg, Australia’s treasurer, in a speech last month.
In a Facebook post earlier this year, Singapore’s Labor Ministry said that despite “speculation that Singapore may experience a similar ‘Great Wave of Resignation’,” its “stats show otherwise.” The country’s exit rate was 1.7% at the end of last year, slightly below pre-Covid levels. The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, has stressed the EU countries “experiencing no such thing as The Great Resignation”. In Europe, many governments made extensive use of short-time work programs that encouraged struggling companies to keep tens of millions of employees but reduce their working hours. The state then subsidized part of their salary. This differed from the approach in the United States, where workers received post-layoff benefits or received stimulus checks in the mail that replenished their savings regardless of employment status — and may have helped reduce attrition.
“Across Europe, for the most part, people stayed with their employers,” said Guillaume Menuet, head of investment strategy and economics for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Citi Private Bank.
But there were signs of churn. In France, the number of layoffs in the third quarter of 2021 was the highest since 2007, according to the latest available data.
The Australian government said last month that 1 million workers started a new job in the three months to November 2021. The job turnover rate is almost 10% above the pre-pandemic average.
And in the UK, the rate of employed persons aged 16-64 who switched from one job to another was at an all-time high of 3.2% between October and December.
Still, Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies, believes that claims that the Great Resignation crossed the Atlantic are exaggerated, noting that this rate is only slightly higher than in the early 2000s.
Dissatisfaction grows
It’s clear that Americans aren’t the only ones who think differently about work.
Joan Pons Laplana, a 47-year-old from Sheffield, England, quit his job as a senior nurse in the National Health Service almost a year ago. He now works as a teacher, training people from disadvantaged backgrounds so they can find work in the NHS.
Laplana said he feels guilty for leaving a profession he loved at a time when hospitals were facing a tremendous lack of resources. But when he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after working in intensive care during the first two Covid waves, he knew it was a decision he had to make to protect his sanity.
“The idea of your mortality — that you could be next — was very present,” he said. In addition, he was often the only person caring for dying patients and communicating with their grieving families. “Day after day it took its toll.”
Thibault Prat, a 28-year-old in Paris, France, has resigned in May after nearly five years as an electricity buyer and seller. He said he worked long hours, especially as electricity prices have skyrocketed.
He was also frustrated by not producing anything at his job and not wanting to put numbers into Excel spreadsheets while society grappled with issues like the pandemic and the climate crisis.
“There was a growing gap between my beliefs and my job that I couldn’t live with anymore,” he said.
Prat said he plans to take a few months off before looking for a job in another part of the industry, such as nuclear.
Surveys of workers show that Prat won’t be alone in evaluating his options. The Future Forum report, released in January, found that 53% of workers in France and 55% in Germany and Japan are ready to look for new jobs in the next year. This figure rises to 64% in Australia and 60% in the UK.
change on the horizon?
This willingness to seek new opportunities comes as job vacancies remain high and employers in a range of industries are willing to pay more to hire workers. In the UK, which is also undergoing Brexit-related labor market reform, there are now 4.4 vacancies for every 100 jobs – an all-time high.
“With such a huge talent shortage in the UK, people are quite confident and willing to change jobs,” said Mark Cahill, managing director of UK and Ireland staffing firm ManpowerGroup.
Singapore’s Labor Ministry has also indicated that it is preparing for more resignations in the coming months.
“In sectors with lower-paying jobs, people might move away for better opportunities. Hiring and firing rates are projected to be higher in growth sectors where there is strong demand for labour,” the agency said in January.
In Australia, the government said workers who changed jobs typically received pay increases of between 8% and 10%.
Mariano Mamertino, senior economist for Europe, Middle East and Africa at LinkedIn, said the job market in Europe is also expected to strengthen this year, which could give more people the opportunity to switch roles. According to a LinkedIn poll of about 9,000 workers, about 58% of Europeans say they are considering a job change this year — even though it was completed before Russia invaded Ukraine, which economists say could push the region into recession.
“If the labor market gets really tight, then there are more opportunities,” said Mamertino.
In professions such as nursing in particular, there are signs that burnout is reaching unsustainable levels. A survey of more than 9,500 nurses released late last year by Britain’s Royal College of Nursing found that 57% of respondents were considering quitting or actively quitting their job. The main reasons given were the feeling of being undervalued and the feeling of being exhausted.
Ming Buckley, the Sydney-based employee who left EY – one of the “Big 4” accounting firms – said mental health also played a big part in her decision to leave the firm.
“I was just starting to feel like I was part of a big machine,” she said. “I never saw myself as someone who would be part of the race for the corporate ladder.”
She took a few months off and recently started interviewing. This time, she’s looking for a part-time position with a nonprofit organization—something that better aligns with her values and allows her to build a coaching and mentoring business on the side. It’s an epiphany – aided by the pandemic.
“I don’t think people woke up one day and were super dissatisfied with their jobs,” Ming Buckley said. “I think it’s been built for years and years and years.”