October 12, 2021 ☼ great-resignation
Source: MPR (Link)
As COVID-19 cases surged in August, quits soared in restaurants and hotels from the previous month and rose in other public-facing jobs, such as retail and education. Nearly 900,000 people left jobs at restaurants, bars, and hotels in August, up 21 percent from July. Quits by retail workers rose 6 percent.
Yet in industries such as manufacturing, construction, and transportation and warehousing, quits barely increased. In professional and business services, which includes fields such as law, engineering, and architecture, where most employees can work from home, quitting was largely flat.
Other factors also likely contributed to the jump in quits. With many employers desperate for workers and wages rising at a healthy pace, workers have a much greater ability to demand higher pay, or go elsewhere to find it.
Wages have been flat in real terms since Reagan. That puts a lot of pressure to raise wages in times of labor shortages. Rising wages leads to folks jumping ship. I still think that folks in service jobs are quitting because of bad behavior from customers and unreasonable demands from bosses.