The Great Resignation: Has Something Changed and Will It Ever End?

If you work in HR, lead people, manage people, or have had to hire people at any time in the past two years, you know the term "Big Resignation" all too well.

What started out as an organizational psychology term is now part of our regular business lexicon. It has become synonymous with work in the age of COVID-19 and has sparked thousands of thoughts on topics including employee engagement, compensation, company culture and work-life balance.

So much has already been written about the Great Resignation that what I write here is unlikely to be new or groundbreaking. Nor am I an organizational psychologist or an economist capable of predicting what will happen with labor markets.

Rather, I am here as someone who guided a team through the turbulence of the Great Resignation to recap, reflect, and offer my perspective on what has been the most important work trend of our lifetimes.

The Great Resignation has triggered such a seismic shift in the global economy that it's hard to believe the term is only a year old. Anthony Klotz, associate professor of management at Texas A&M University, coined the term “Great Resignation” in a May 2021 interview with Bloomberg.

Klotz predicted that pent-up quits that didn't happen in the previous year due to COVID-related uncertainty would be multiplied by pandemic-related epiphanies regarding burnout, work-life balance personal, travel, passions, health and well-being.

Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in 2021.

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the hardest hit industries are those that require in-person attendance and traditionally have low wages, including food services, entertainment, hospitality, and retail by retail.

We in the tech industry were certainly not immune to the big quit, either. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, technicians had the skills and tools to quickly and seamlessly transition to hybrid working. This has allowed the tech industry to maintain productivity throughout the pandemic and provide employees with the flexibility and work-life balance they want and need.

From an employer's perspective, this opened up the pool of potential talent, as recruiters could expand their geographic network. From an employee perspective, it gave people more job options and opportunities without the major hurdle of relocation – and people seized the opportunity.

Famous organizational psychologist Adam Grant agrees that the roots of the Great Resignation go back many years. Grant says that more than a decade ago, psychologists saw a generational shift in the centrality of work in our lives. Millennials were more interested in jobs that offered free time and vacations than Gen Xers and baby boomers. They were less concerned with net worth than net freedom.

In 2013, Grant wrote about data from the Pew Research Center that showed more than 90% of workers leaving the workforce were happy with the decision. COVID-19 was just an accelerator of a movement already underway.

Fuller and Kerr think the numbers we're seeing in 2022 are back in line with the pre-pandemic trend, and so employers are likely to face the big quit for years to come.

More than 4.3 million American workers quit their jobs in May 2022, down slightly from 4.4 million in April, and 4.2 million people quit in June, despite an economic slowdown and fears of a recession.

Klotz, now a professor at University College London, also thinks the trend isn't going away any time soon. In an interview with Fortune Magazine last April, Klotz said quits will continue at a higher rate for many more months as people continue to assess what it means to have a healthy work-life balance.

In other words, people are still sorting out their lives amid the pandemic.

Another problem Klotz thinks workers face is burnout. Nearly two and a half years after the start of the pandemic, the work...