Over the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic dominated our thoughts, headlines, and everyday lives. It has given us little, if any, mental space to focus on other developments that could prove just as important. As most of us anxiously waited to “flatten the curve” and receive our first vaccinations in 2020, a movement began capturing the hearts of millions across the globe. Already known by some for its nearly 2-million-strong Reddit community, r/Antiwork, mass media is now calling it the “The Great Resignation”—an accurate title and long overdue recognition of the movement’s significance.
Just three days ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shockingly revealed that 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in February alone. This may not seem strange in the short term; it might even be an improvement versus much of 2021. When looked at over a larger time frame, though, a far more concerning picture materializes: U.S. employment is experiencing a deliberate and record-breaking exodus.
The pandemic is not to blame, though—at least not entirely. According to more than a decade of monthly BLS reports, Americans have followed a gradual trend leading up to today’s crisis. COVID-19’s economic impacts and the past year’s surging inflation simply helped sentiments reach a breaking point. This has culminated in organized online communities and now, large-scale public debate.
Until 2020, most Americans lived normal lives with the occasional sick day here and a rare snow day there. They would wake up knowing without a second thought how their day would unfold: get out of bed and get ready, work eight hours for a modest wage—rinse and repeat. Most tolerated this monotony out of necessity. However, that changed in March 2020 when Americans unexpectedly received an overwhelming amount of free time. Taking the opportunity to explore their passions and discover new ones, many realized that toiling away to make just enough was simply not worth their happiness. These revelations combined with federal stimulus checks to change workers’ career decisions. With rising irreligious sentiment added to the mix whose adherents believe “This life is all I have, so I’d better enjoy myself,” it’s easy to understand why we are where we are today.
The millions who have quit their jobs in the past two years are not—as some free-market fundamentalists would argue—lazy free riders of society’s growing economic pie. They are humans, and their decisions prove that humans are driven by far more than just monetary gain. No one’s desire is limited to comfort either; some would even put long-term happiness over short-term comfort. But how can one be happy throwing their precious years into an endless, unexciting routine that gives them barely enough to feed, raise, and house their families? As workers keep confronting tasteless bureaucracies and dystopian atomization, the dichotomy between happiness and labor will only widen. The U.S. could be heading towards economic stagnation and demographic downturn as more workers put existential satisfaction over mediocre monetary gain and raising children is increasingly viewed as financially irresponsible. Our society relies on many jobs to function, but the problematic reality for millions of workers across the globe cannot go unignored. Employment and happiness must come hand-in-hand, or else millions will be forced to choose between them. Employers might not like the outcome of that decision.
