A December survey by the Indeed job site on about 1,000 workers in Singapore found that almost half of those surveyed were unsure if they would stay in their current positions for the next six months. Nearly a quarter planned to leave their employer in the first half of this year. LinkedIn data for January showed a significant increase in the number of employees switching industries in Spain, the Netherlands and Italy compared to the beginning of 2021. And in an employee survey commissioned by the messaging company Slack, which covers Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Japan and France, the job search gap is growing every quarter since June. “This is the recalculation that people did when they rethink the role of work in their lives,” said Brian Elliott, senior vice president of Slack, who leads the Future Forum. “They are rethinking – not just in terms of things like compensation – but also, clearly, things like flexibility, purpose, balance.”
Where is the wave?
Anthony Klotz, a professor of business administration at A&M University in Texas, credited with coining the term “The Great Resignation,” identified trends in late 2020 that he believed could catalyze the transformation of the U.S. job market. There was an influx of people who wanted to quit their jobs, as people were largely left in their place during the initial phase of the pandemic. Reports of burnout were widespread. People asked big questions about the purpose of life while sitting in large piles of savings. And there was the possibility of friction as those who worked remotely and now prioritize flexibility were called back to the office. The theory was true: In 2021, 47.8 million workers in the United States left their jobs voluntarily, the highest number since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began monitoring full-year data in 2001. The number of resignations remained high in January and in February This year. In some cases, individuals have left the job market to care for their children or elderly relatives. Employee shortages in industries such as retail and hospitality have increased the demand for labor, encouraging people to take advantage of a competitive market for a role with better benefits or pay. The people who worked in the office, tired of the many hours of pandemics and Zoom meetings, began to decide that they were full. “I wore too many hats for one person,” said Bobbi Conclin, who quit her job at Cintas last month. The 25-year-old, who lives in New Jersey, said she was fired from her 10 to 12 hour job and started a new role at an e-commerce company a few days later. The factors identified by Klotz are not unique to the United States. But the debate has erupted over whether the Great Resignation has reached other labor markets. “We are seeing a ‘Great Reformation’ rather than a ‘Great Resignation,’” Australian Treasurer Josh Friedenberg said in a speech last month. In a Facebook post earlier this year, Singapore’s Ministry of Labor said that despite speculation that Singapore could see a similar wave of “Great Resignation”, “its statistics show the opposite”. The country’s resignation rate was 1.7% at the end of last year, slightly lower than pre-Covid levels. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde stressed that EU countries “do not experience something like the Great Resignation”. In Europe, many governments have made extensive use of short-term employment schemes, which have encouraged troubled companies to retain tens of millions of employees but reduce their working hours. The state then subsidized part of their pay. This differed from the approach in the United States, where employees received post-dismissal benefits or were sent incentive checks that paid for their savings regardless of employment status – and may have helped reduce turnover. “Across Europe, for the most part, people stayed with the employers they had,” said Guillaume Menuet, Citi Private Bank’s head of investment strategy and economics for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. But there were signs of a reversal. In France, the number of resignations in the third quarter of 2021, the most recent data available, was the highest in archives dating back to 2007. The Australian government said last month that 1 million workers took on new roles in the three months to November 2021. The job change rate is almost 10% above the pre-pandemic average. And in the UK, the proportion of workers aged 16 to 64 moving from job to job was at an all-time high of 3.2% between October and December. However, Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies, believes the claims that the Great Depression crossed the Atlantic are exaggerated, noting that this figure is slightly higher than in the early 2000s.
Dissatisfaction is growing
It is clear that Americans are not the only ones who think differently about work. Joan Pons Laplana, 47, of Sheffield, England, quit his job as a senior nurse at the National Health Service almost a year ago. He now works as a teacher, training people from disadvantaged backgrounds so that they can find work in the NHS. Laplana said he felt guilty about leaving a profession he loved at a time when hospitals were facing a huge shortage of resources. But when he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after working in the intensive care unit during the first two Covid waves, he knew it was a decision he had to make to maintain his mental health. “The idea of your mortality – that you could be the next – was very present,” he said. In addition, he was often the only person caring for dying patients and communicating with their bereaved families. “Day by day, he had tolls.” Thibault Prat, a 28-year-old in Paris, France, quit his job and bought and sold electricity in May after almost five years. He said he works long hours, especially as the price of electricity has skyrocketed. He was also disappointed that he did not produce anything in his work and did not want to link numbers to Excel spreadsheets as society struggled with issues such as the pandemic and the climate crisis. “There was a growing gap between my beliefs and my job that I could no longer live with,” he said. Pratt said he plans to take a few months off before looking for work in another part of the industry, such as the nuclear sector. Employee surveys show that Prat will not be alone in evaluating his choices. The Future Forum report, published in January, found that 53% of workers in France and 55% in Germany and Japan are open to looking for new jobs next year. This figure rises to 64% in Australia and 60% in the United Kingdom.
Change on the horizon?
This willingness to look for new opportunities comes as jobs remain high and employers in various industries are willing to pay more for hiring. In the United Kingdom, where a Brexit-related labor market reform is also unfolding, there are now 4.4 job vacancies for every 100 jobs – an all-time high. “With so much talent in the UK right now, people are pretty confident and ready to move jobs,” said Mark Cahill, UK and Ireland, chief executive of ManpowerGroup. The Singapore Ministry of Labor also said it was preparing for more resignations in the coming months. “In sectors with lower paid jobs, people could leave because of better opportunities. In development areas where there is a high demand for labor, recruitment and resignation rates will be expected to be higher,” the agency said in January. In Australia, the government said workers who moved jobs typically received wage increases of between 8% and 10%. Mariano Mamertino, senior economist for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at LinkedIn, said the labor market in Europe is also expected to strengthen this year, which could give more people the opportunity to change roles. About 58% of Europeans say they are considering a job change this year, according to a LinkedIn survey of about 9,000 workers – although it was completed before Russia invaded Ukraine, which economists have warned could push the region into recession. . “When the job market becomes very narrow, it is when there are more opportunities available,” Mamertino said. In professions such as nursing, in particular, there are indications that burnout is reaching unsustainable levels. A survey of more than 9,500 nurses by the Royal College of Nursing in the United Kingdom published late last year found that 57% of respondents were considering quitting their jobs or actively planning to leave. The main reasons mentioned were the feeling of devaluation and the feeling of exhaustion. Ming Buckley, a Sydney worker who left EY – one of the Big 4 accounting firms – said mental health also played a role in her decision to leave. “I just started to feel like I was part of a big machine,” he said. “I never saw myself as someone who would take part in the race to climb the corporate ladder.” He took a few months off and recently started doing interviews. This time, she is looking for a part-time role in a non-profit organization – something that is more in line with her values and will allow her to start a mentoring and mentoring business. It is an epiphany – it was helped by the pandemic. “I do not think people woke up one day and were extremely unhappy with their job,” Ming Buckley said. “I think it is being built for years and years and years.”
