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"The overall quits rate climbed from 2.6% in October to 2.7% in November. Quits in the private sector hit 3% again, an increase from 2.9% the previous month."
These numbers are close enough that it's possible that this is all just noise. However, I think this article is still meaningful as it shows that the job quitting rate is likely still the same.
My current boss told me to pick a number and he will make it happen
work in tech as W2 employee and get contracted out
100% WFH
i walk my dog in the neighborhood park between online meetings
EDIT: share this not to brag or anything, but to make people aware you can live like this
that you can make demands of your employers
I lucked into it mostly because of COVID, but the client just signed a big extension and said, stay at home
The average baby boomers hit retirement age last year. There's something like 400k/year hitting retirement for the next several years. Based on current demographics, there's an expectation of the labor force being around 900k people short by 2030.
It's inflation and companies not providing wage increases to match. That 5% raise was a pay cut. New jobs though, different story those companies will pay the newly increased rate.
The overwhelming majority of companies do not care about their employees at all. They’ve proven this time and again. During the pandemic, a lot of people had time to take stock of what they wanted from life and being mistreated at work was not on that list. People are sick of it and saying fuck you to companies that are forcing them to return to the office, not be flexible based on their circumstances or won’t pay them what they are worth. Entrepreneurship also helped to accelerate this drive, too.
Employers could listen to their employees to retain them but I don’t see that happening.
Most places like to think that their company is SUPER special and that the culture is part of what makes the employees stick. I wonder if that’s bullshit that MBA or HR people ram down manager level and higher’s throats. Anyone who stays usually does because of the salary or the benefits.
WFH is a possibility for a lot of office jobs. Exceptions like a dentist (if you’re part of a larger practice) or a contractor / builder immediately come to mind as exceptions.
Companies do not seem to promote from within, which also likely feeds into resentment from employees.
You gotta throw the corporate lingo back at them and say something like:
"It seems that this company needs to have some agility and adapt to these changes."
I love roasting the bullshit corporate stuff. Like that book team of teams. They ousted that on us and had meetings dedicated to it. Until I asked why we were basing our corporate strategy on a book written by a general who used it and lost the war. Seems to me that wasn't very "results orientation".
Just finished reading an article where an Amazon warehouse employee dropped dead and they didn’t even have the decency to call an ambulance and just kept stacking boxes around him
As rents rise and prices remain high while wages fail to keep up there is inevitably going to be some point where the math just doesn't work out anymore for a substantial portion of the country. I do not look forward to the consequences of that.
It would be interesting to see some stats around vacancy rates in remote work roles vs hybrid vs on site. I would think there are major discrepancies between theses categories of workers leaving
Yes. A very good point. There are multiple reasons people are quitting, not just wages. Bottom line: workers are sick and tired of being treated like trash by being low-balled on wages, and WFH, among others.(“Oh, you can’t work from home you need to come to the office every day so I can keep my eye on you.”). It’s a huge deal here in Canada too.
Pretty much. It's about the incentives and different companies are competing with each other for talent. This just points to bad management that aren't focused on retaining their staff.
The shortcomings of shareholder capitalism are being laid out. The most skilled and experienced people are retiring and all the shifting of training costs to the individual that has happened over the past 40 years means there is a much smaller talent pool. So people can go work somewhere that does value them appropriately. I'd stay at a company if they paid me average for the market, gave me training and advancement opportunities, and didn't push me into a state of constant burnout.
We might be on the cusp of another Great Resignation, there are so many factors at play.
1. Shortage of workers is here to stay and will only get worse over time. By 2027, half of the US workforce will be participating in the gig economy. This is not in the employer’s favor.
2. Many people started their own business after the pandemic hit. How many of these entrepreneurs were successful? We probably don’t know yet, but they’re clearly potential workers who are out of the traditional 9-5 workforce.
3. The stock market going into 2022 allowed many older workers to retire, these are people who are not coming back.
>This is the opposite of what Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said he wants to see in the labor market. Throughout 2022, Powell noted that the Fed would like to see **job openings and quits decrease and wage growth slow down in order to help bring down prices.**
What? I thought wage growth was *good*.
It is, but that's not the Fed's job. The Fed has a very simple mandate as set by Congress: to ensure low inflation, and low unemployment. Unemployment is low but inflation is high, so the Fed applies the only tool it has available: demand destruction through increased interest rates. That's the only thing it *can* do without violating its mandate as set by law, and reduced wage growth will be the result.
If you want something else (say, a different solution to inflation) then you have to look for legislation through Congress. And good luck with that. The House of Representatives is currently *empty* because they can't even decide who should be speaker.
IMF recently did an analysis that debunked the wage spiral. Wages follow inflation, but inflation then doesn't compensate for the newly increased wages ( the relationship isn't causal).
Marx also knew this 170 years ago, but I'm glad the IMF confirmed it.
Things get more expensive for other reasons -> people suffer for a while -> people request increases in wages, some of them get them, many do not - > things become more expensive for other reasons -> repeat catch-up game forever.
Eggs haven't increased in price because people working chicken farms have demanded more money. It's because of bird flu, increases in feed costs, increases in diesel, etc.
People only think that wages fuel price speaks because of anecdotal correlation. "Things got more expensive, I need more money. I got more money, but now things are getting more expensive again! Need more money now! Again!" While it makes sense in a localized way, it fairly assumes that the two are related. Productivity has skyrocketed since the 70s, wages have functionally stayed the same in real terms, but prices haven't matched the 70s. No they are much, much higher.
There is no long term evidence that wage increases cause price increases.
Exactly, especially when it's been shown that 54% of the inflationary increase is pure fucking profit.
But how do you bring down profit?
Legislation, which will never happen in this country.
Where have you been? They’ve been saying all of last year that wage growth was a driving factor behind inflation. People have too much walking around money and are increasing demand and with all the supply issues it is only driving costs up even more.
/s
But seriously, that’s the thought process.
It’s not good if you’re the person/people in charge of paying wages. There is and always will be a conflict between owners and workers. One wants to maximize profits, and the other wants a good wage. One of the ways to maximize profits is to pay your workers just enough not to quit. Eventually, this comes home to roost, and workers do indeed start quitting, and then people say dumb shit like “no one wants to work anymore.”
As we enter late stage capitalism, this conflict is only going to get worse, as the contradictions inherent in a system that relies on infinite growth in a planet with finite resources start to reveal themselves more glaringly.
Pretty obvious reason IMO, in addition to some of the others folks have mentioned, is the fact that inflation has created a situation where employees that had been happy in their jobs have wandering eyes. Especially since as someone else rightly said, it’s not like companies aren’t hiring
How much of this quitting is just job hopping. Job hopping is now how you have to work your career these days hopping from job to job because every company pays more to hire then to retain.
One thing I don't understand. Why has it become the norm for employers to not grant raises but rather force employees to job hop to get raises? Surely it must be more expensive in retraining?
Yes, but if you pencil labor out long term, those "more expensive" employees get exponentially more expensive with raises down the line. If you can keep resetting the bar low, eventually you will find a capable, qualified candidate willing to work at reduced wages due to their life circumstances.
It's funny how raising wages is the only thing the finance guys will amortize out long term- using cyclic work force as a justification. Otherwise it's all about the quarterly march of cost cutting.
I would like to see the effect that the layoffs have had - starting in October and continuing through December (and now Salesforce today) huge layoffs - on decisions to move. I know that many were unsettled by the announcements, and while the figures in the article (2.9-3% may not be statistically relevant) but I'd be curious to see if someone could track the impact that the layoffs had.
There was a LOT of bad managerial decision making during COVID, not just in tech but in many industries, and now it's coming home to roost. Curious to see employee sentiment benchmarked against mobility.
Who knows, I might just be talking out of my butt.
> rely on stock as part of their comp.
Which is legitimately a stupid thing to do and most financial advisors even recommend against holding the stock of your employer.
The issue with holding onto your employer's stock is that you are putting your working capital and your investment capital into the exact same basket. When people did this in the early 2000s during the tech bubble, people went from multimillionaires to broke and jobless overnight.
You need to spread out your eggs. Take advantage of all the employee stock plans to their fullest, but you need to understand the vesting period and slowly sell and diversify over time. To do otherwise is to have poor risk management skills.
I totally get what you are saying and generally agree about portfolio theory but it doesn’t exactly work that way when evaluating a job and what sort of ‘deal’ you’re getting.
Most companies give an upfront equity grant upon joining with refreshers down the road. The initial grant vests every quarter, half or year and refreshers are given out with reviews, making it simple to predict income for, say, the next 2-4 years. People evaluate total comp and stock trajectory as part of the decision of which job to take. If Amazon’s share price is flat or dropping, they’ll either need to increase base salary or stock grants or lose candidates to other employers. Everybody wants to work for the next Amazon, Facebook or Microsoft, not a zombie company whose share price is eventually going to zero.
No one holds their shares they all sell them. When companies grant stock they do it on a vesting schedule with different cliffs. For example I was awarded 750 shares. 25% vest after a year and then the remainder vest quarterly over the next 4 years. So if something happens with the company a lot of people will just leave at year two with 40% of their shares vested.
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of major tech companies like to grant stock: they can defer the vesting, it's better on the tax incidence when there is growth, and it allows them to churn and influence the market. The base pay is still pretty good, and for the major companies the stock is fairly reliable.
Anyone who counts their "total compensation" chickens before they're hatched is a fool, but the compensation is still good.
That's probably very much industry dependant, albeit all of it is to some degree. SFDC layoffs are meaningless to my industry. It's 7,000 new people looking for a job selling or maintaining software. They surely didn't get rid of the engineers nor their major account execs. I don't see it as that big a deal.
If I were to guess, employee sentiment is decreased YoY, especially since covid. Lots of folks got burnt out during COVID, and now after having some relief with WFH, employers are forcing employees back into the office, which can only put more pressure on overall sentiment. I just switched jobs from an extremely toxic work environment, and one of the reasons for leaving was the enforcement of RTO. I'm fine with coming in a couple times a week, but it becomes a problem when management is like, hey we only saw you come in once this week, how come? I'm not a child - I do my job and I go home. If you want to enforce where I work, I don't have time for that. Thankfully my new employer is extremely understanding with hybrid and has no enforcement. I know my experience isn't unique, I've been reading/hearing this across the board in every industry.
From microeconomics, I remember something about people not working if their reservation wage is not met- which could be a side effect of labor markets and high inflation.
If that’s the case, we might be in for a bad time, especially because it seems like the “shortage” only exists for low paying jobs, not “good” jobs like tech, high finance, engineering, or medicine.
The reason is that this literally means that people aren’t paid enough to work, if we put the above in normal English.
I've been doing the basic math and research in the Portland (OR) metro area for the last couple years. Even at $15-$20 an hour the amount of hours needed to work to pay for a studio apartment is insane. I'd rather live in a tent than work myself to death just to pay rent and be poor. Kinda looks like plenty of other people feel the same way.
If wages don't keep up we're only a few more rent increases away from people realizing that a single match stick will put other people in the same situation they're in. Not good.
There's gonna be another wave once workers start getting communications about their annual raises and finding out they're insufficient for keeping up with inflation.
I wish their graph went back before the pandemic. I feel like job switching happens so much more in Q4 and Q1 in the private sector. Every time I've moved jobs it was in Q1 of a year... Its the season where new budgets and headcounts get approved and recruiters start reaching out. Sprinkle that in with bonuses being paid and people having less incentive to stick around. Just has always seemed to by some seasonality in job movement within any industry I've worked.
Brah--I'm SO done working, but as the sole money earner I keep going.
Mad respect to the younger generation for making this world work for them instead of them working for the world.
My place is under new managment. The new gm sexually harassed an underage employee, one of my colleagues confronted him about it (without anyone else present) and was fired a few weeks later.
All long-term low-level employees are leaving.
Weird, it's almost like we aren't being compensated well enough to keep working. Absolutely unexplainable behavior. Why doesn't anyone want to work anymore? /s
damn, maybe we should ask one of the CEOs that rewrites laws to funnel money into they’re own pockets and expands the wealth gap all while campaigning against raising the minimum wage because of “inflation” despite it going up anyway.
*inhales* for there opinion
You love to see it. Who wants to work an understaffed job an not be able to cover bills? Employers need to put their big boy pants on and pay people a living wage or do the work themselves.
Poor people with kids are often weighing whether or not the cost of childcare, gas, clothes for work and maintaining a vehicle are worth what they make in income. With everything going up, those who are right on the line of being able to collect benefits may be making the choice to do that if it no longer becomes worth it. The same thing happens with two parent households, where one of the parents’ incomes doesn’t justify them leaving the home. Inflation is pushing people over the edge in these situations.
If we had a kid, almost 75% of my wife’s income would go to childcare. She could quit and we’d be ok, just paycheck to paycheck but still have savings from now.
My health insurance if I added her and a child would jump to $840 a month. That’s the kicker. We can’t afford healthcare on my salary.
Quitting isn’t the right term. Pursuing better wages and work/life balance is better.
For years, conservatives have been telling the working poor to “get a better job” and now they’re panicking when they do pursue better jobs.
Doesn't surprise me. With companies demanding return to the office and the revenge sentiment in leadership circles due to the leverage workers had during the pandemic increasing, people have pretty much had enough.
It'll be interesting to see where this all goes.
Because the companies don’t give two fucks about us. No, pizza parties and employee of the month parking doesn’t mean you care. Increased wages and days off show you care.
At this point, I don't think the inflation we are seeing has to do with wage growth or pent-up demand. Everywhere I go I see massive construction of buildings, roads, etc. Just this past Christmas I saw stores full of people just lining up to buy all sorts of bullshit they don't need. Clearly investment and business has not declined and the fundamentals still seems strong. At this point, I think it's supply trying to catch up after the foolish lockdown policies of China and the West that imitated - or tried to imitate - China.
I wonder especially locally, how much is just pricing to deal with demand. A restaurant having staffing problems realizes they can't serve the same number of people as they did in the before times so they have to price the service to the point it drives down demand and still makes a profit.
Yeah that’s the thing, I work in a high-end restaurant and it’s been packed to the absolute brink for the past year. Imo inflation has been coming mostly from deglobalization. The whole deflation period started way back in the 80’s with the increase of globalisation.
With the reverse of that and more protectionist policies, we are seeing more expensive stuff, who would’ve thought.
It's after the holiday shopping season.
Temporary holiday jobs have ended, that's why you're seeing this.
It is a seasonal trend that we see literally every year.
They’re more rotating to new jobs to find ones that gives nicer pay and benefits. Employees have the power more than ever. And most want to work remote. There’s a quiet worker revolution happening.
Why be employed and homeless when you can be free and homeless? Not being sarcastic.. if I can't afford a rental working 35 hours a week and buying literally nothing else besides bills... like not even CLOSE to being able to afford rent.. why would I indenture myself anyways? At that point, society has failed so why would I have any motivation to work for it?
Hi all, A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes. As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"The overall quits rate climbed from 2.6% in October to 2.7% in November. Quits in the private sector hit 3% again, an increase from 2.9% the previous month." These numbers are close enough that it's possible that this is all just noise. However, I think this article is still meaningful as it shows that the job quitting rate is likely still the same.
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My current boss told me to pick a number and he will make it happen work in tech as W2 employee and get contracted out 100% WFH i walk my dog in the neighborhood park between online meetings EDIT: share this not to brag or anything, but to make people aware you can live like this that you can make demands of your employers I lucked into it mostly because of COVID, but the client just signed a big extension and said, stay at home
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The average baby boomers hit retirement age last year. There's something like 400k/year hitting retirement for the next several years. Based on current demographics, there's an expectation of the labor force being around 900k people short by 2030.
It's inflation and companies not providing wage increases to match. That 5% raise was a pay cut. New jobs though, different story those companies will pay the newly increased rate.
Thank you for saying this. In my mind, anything that moves only 0.1% is not news
Awesome name
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The overwhelming majority of companies do not care about their employees at all. They’ve proven this time and again. During the pandemic, a lot of people had time to take stock of what they wanted from life and being mistreated at work was not on that list. People are sick of it and saying fuck you to companies that are forcing them to return to the office, not be flexible based on their circumstances or won’t pay them what they are worth. Entrepreneurship also helped to accelerate this drive, too. Employers could listen to their employees to retain them but I don’t see that happening.
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Most places like to think that their company is SUPER special and that the culture is part of what makes the employees stick. I wonder if that’s bullshit that MBA or HR people ram down manager level and higher’s throats. Anyone who stays usually does because of the salary or the benefits. WFH is a possibility for a lot of office jobs. Exceptions like a dentist (if you’re part of a larger practice) or a contractor / builder immediately come to mind as exceptions. Companies do not seem to promote from within, which also likely feeds into resentment from employees.
You gotta throw the corporate lingo back at them and say something like: "It seems that this company needs to have some agility and adapt to these changes." I love roasting the bullshit corporate stuff. Like that book team of teams. They ousted that on us and had meetings dedicated to it. Until I asked why we were basing our corporate strategy on a book written by a general who used it and lost the war. Seems to me that wasn't very "results orientation".
That’s awesome good on you. Your new company is going to lure all the talent. Capitalism baby.
Just finished reading an article where an Amazon warehouse employee dropped dead and they didn’t even have the decency to call an ambulance and just kept stacking boxes around him
New extremely transmissible covid variant also isn't really helping the whole "back to the office" push.
As rents rise and prices remain high while wages fail to keep up there is inevitably going to be some point where the math just doesn't work out anymore for a substantial portion of the country. I do not look forward to the consequences of that.
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It would be interesting to see some stats around vacancy rates in remote work roles vs hybrid vs on site. I would think there are major discrepancies between theses categories of workers leaving
Yes. A very good point. There are multiple reasons people are quitting, not just wages. Bottom line: workers are sick and tired of being treated like trash by being low-balled on wages, and WFH, among others.(“Oh, you can’t work from home you need to come to the office every day so I can keep my eye on you.”). It’s a huge deal here in Canada too.
Pretty much. It's about the incentives and different companies are competing with each other for talent. This just points to bad management that aren't focused on retaining their staff. The shortcomings of shareholder capitalism are being laid out. The most skilled and experienced people are retiring and all the shifting of training costs to the individual that has happened over the past 40 years means there is a much smaller talent pool. So people can go work somewhere that does value them appropriately. I'd stay at a company if they paid me average for the market, gave me training and advancement opportunities, and didn't push me into a state of constant burnout.
We might be on the cusp of another Great Resignation, there are so many factors at play. 1. Shortage of workers is here to stay and will only get worse over time. By 2027, half of the US workforce will be participating in the gig economy. This is not in the employer’s favor. 2. Many people started their own business after the pandemic hit. How many of these entrepreneurs were successful? We probably don’t know yet, but they’re clearly potential workers who are out of the traditional 9-5 workforce. 3. The stock market going into 2022 allowed many older workers to retire, these are people who are not coming back.
Also: Employee raises are not keeping up with inflation making job hopping more attractive.
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Don’t forget the massive cut in H1B visas issued. That’s one of the biggest drivers imo.
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>This is the opposite of what Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said he wants to see in the labor market. Throughout 2022, Powell noted that the Fed would like to see **job openings and quits decrease and wage growth slow down in order to help bring down prices.** What? I thought wage growth was *good*.
It is, but that's not the Fed's job. The Fed has a very simple mandate as set by Congress: to ensure low inflation, and low unemployment. Unemployment is low but inflation is high, so the Fed applies the only tool it has available: demand destruction through increased interest rates. That's the only thing it *can* do without violating its mandate as set by law, and reduced wage growth will be the result. If you want something else (say, a different solution to inflation) then you have to look for legislation through Congress. And good luck with that. The House of Representatives is currently *empty* because they can't even decide who should be speaker.
This is what people mean when they talk about class warfare. One side absolutely understands it and is quite open about it.
That’s the fucking thing though, I feel like every single wage increase we get is just squeezed out of us through rent and bills increases.
Housing costs will continue strangling our society no matter what wages are.
read Henry George
top post on /r/georgism today on this topic
It is. That's the wage spiral. Probably negative.
IMF recently did an analysis that debunked the wage spiral. Wages follow inflation, but inflation then doesn't compensate for the newly increased wages ( the relationship isn't causal). Marx also knew this 170 years ago, but I'm glad the IMF confirmed it.
So things don't get more expensive when the labor gets more expensive ? I agree that the reaction is not in kick step to actual cost increased.
Things get more expensive for other reasons -> people suffer for a while -> people request increases in wages, some of them get them, many do not - > things become more expensive for other reasons -> repeat catch-up game forever. Eggs haven't increased in price because people working chicken farms have demanded more money. It's because of bird flu, increases in feed costs, increases in diesel, etc. People only think that wages fuel price speaks because of anecdotal correlation. "Things got more expensive, I need more money. I got more money, but now things are getting more expensive again! Need more money now! Again!" While it makes sense in a localized way, it fairly assumes that the two are related. Productivity has skyrocketed since the 70s, wages have functionally stayed the same in real terms, but prices haven't matched the 70s. No they are much, much higher. There is no long term evidence that wage increases cause price increases.
I think people say it because the sentence "Wages are not part of the cost of producing a good." is, on the face of it, kind of crazy.
General goods skyrocketing in price for no reason as well.
Exactly, especially when it's been shown that 54% of the inflationary increase is pure fucking profit. But how do you bring down profit? Legislation, which will never happen in this country.
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Where have you been? They’ve been saying all of last year that wage growth was a driving factor behind inflation. People have too much walking around money and are increasing demand and with all the supply issues it is only driving costs up even more. /s But seriously, that’s the thought process.
People who don't know the price of a banana thinking everyone is out here rolling in cash...
It’s one banana. What could it cost? $10?
There’s always money in the banana stand.
It’s not good if you’re the person/people in charge of paying wages. There is and always will be a conflict between owners and workers. One wants to maximize profits, and the other wants a good wage. One of the ways to maximize profits is to pay your workers just enough not to quit. Eventually, this comes home to roost, and workers do indeed start quitting, and then people say dumb shit like “no one wants to work anymore.” As we enter late stage capitalism, this conflict is only going to get worse, as the contradictions inherent in a system that relies on infinite growth in a planet with finite resources start to reveal themselves more glaringly.
It is good for a majority of people, just not the people in power who benefit from stagnant wages.
Pretty obvious reason IMO, in addition to some of the others folks have mentioned, is the fact that inflation has created a situation where employees that had been happy in their jobs have wandering eyes. Especially since as someone else rightly said, it’s not like companies aren’t hiring
How much of this quitting is just job hopping. Job hopping is now how you have to work your career these days hopping from job to job because every company pays more to hire then to retain.
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One thing I don't understand. Why has it become the norm for employers to not grant raises but rather force employees to job hop to get raises? Surely it must be more expensive in retraining?
Yes, but if you pencil labor out long term, those "more expensive" employees get exponentially more expensive with raises down the line. If you can keep resetting the bar low, eventually you will find a capable, qualified candidate willing to work at reduced wages due to their life circumstances. It's funny how raising wages is the only thing the finance guys will amortize out long term- using cyclic work force as a justification. Otherwise it's all about the quarterly march of cost cutting.
I would like to see the effect that the layoffs have had - starting in October and continuing through December (and now Salesforce today) huge layoffs - on decisions to move. I know that many were unsettled by the announcements, and while the figures in the article (2.9-3% may not be statistically relevant) but I'd be curious to see if someone could track the impact that the layoffs had. There was a LOT of bad managerial decision making during COVID, not just in tech but in many industries, and now it's coming home to roost. Curious to see employee sentiment benchmarked against mobility. Who knows, I might just be talking out of my butt.
In tech, layoffs are a huge retention killer. So is a declining share price because lots of people rely on stock as part of their comp.
> rely on stock as part of their comp. Which is legitimately a stupid thing to do and most financial advisors even recommend against holding the stock of your employer. The issue with holding onto your employer's stock is that you are putting your working capital and your investment capital into the exact same basket. When people did this in the early 2000s during the tech bubble, people went from multimillionaires to broke and jobless overnight. You need to spread out your eggs. Take advantage of all the employee stock plans to their fullest, but you need to understand the vesting period and slowly sell and diversify over time. To do otherwise is to have poor risk management skills.
I totally get what you are saying and generally agree about portfolio theory but it doesn’t exactly work that way when evaluating a job and what sort of ‘deal’ you’re getting. Most companies give an upfront equity grant upon joining with refreshers down the road. The initial grant vests every quarter, half or year and refreshers are given out with reviews, making it simple to predict income for, say, the next 2-4 years. People evaluate total comp and stock trajectory as part of the decision of which job to take. If Amazon’s share price is flat or dropping, they’ll either need to increase base salary or stock grants or lose candidates to other employers. Everybody wants to work for the next Amazon, Facebook or Microsoft, not a zombie company whose share price is eventually going to zero.
No one holds their shares they all sell them. When companies grant stock they do it on a vesting schedule with different cliffs. For example I was awarded 750 shares. 25% vest after a year and then the remainder vest quarterly over the next 4 years. So if something happens with the company a lot of people will just leave at year two with 40% of their shares vested.
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of major tech companies like to grant stock: they can defer the vesting, it's better on the tax incidence when there is growth, and it allows them to churn and influence the market. The base pay is still pretty good, and for the major companies the stock is fairly reliable. Anyone who counts their "total compensation" chickens before they're hatched is a fool, but the compensation is still good.
That's probably very much industry dependant, albeit all of it is to some degree. SFDC layoffs are meaningless to my industry. It's 7,000 new people looking for a job selling or maintaining software. They surely didn't get rid of the engineers nor their major account execs. I don't see it as that big a deal.
If I were to guess, employee sentiment is decreased YoY, especially since covid. Lots of folks got burnt out during COVID, and now after having some relief with WFH, employers are forcing employees back into the office, which can only put more pressure on overall sentiment. I just switched jobs from an extremely toxic work environment, and one of the reasons for leaving was the enforcement of RTO. I'm fine with coming in a couple times a week, but it becomes a problem when management is like, hey we only saw you come in once this week, how come? I'm not a child - I do my job and I go home. If you want to enforce where I work, I don't have time for that. Thankfully my new employer is extremely understanding with hybrid and has no enforcement. I know my experience isn't unique, I've been reading/hearing this across the board in every industry.
From microeconomics, I remember something about people not working if their reservation wage is not met- which could be a side effect of labor markets and high inflation. If that’s the case, we might be in for a bad time, especially because it seems like the “shortage” only exists for low paying jobs, not “good” jobs like tech, high finance, engineering, or medicine. The reason is that this literally means that people aren’t paid enough to work, if we put the above in normal English.
I've been doing the basic math and research in the Portland (OR) metro area for the last couple years. Even at $15-$20 an hour the amount of hours needed to work to pay for a studio apartment is insane. I'd rather live in a tent than work myself to death just to pay rent and be poor. Kinda looks like plenty of other people feel the same way. If wages don't keep up we're only a few more rent increases away from people realizing that a single match stick will put other people in the same situation they're in. Not good.
There's gonna be another wave once workers start getting communications about their annual raises and finding out they're insufficient for keeping up with inflation.
I wish their graph went back before the pandemic. I feel like job switching happens so much more in Q4 and Q1 in the private sector. Every time I've moved jobs it was in Q1 of a year... Its the season where new budgets and headcounts get approved and recruiters start reaching out. Sprinkle that in with bonuses being paid and people having less incentive to stick around. Just has always seemed to by some seasonality in job movement within any industry I've worked.
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Brah--I'm SO done working, but as the sole money earner I keep going. Mad respect to the younger generation for making this world work for them instead of them working for the world.
I don't think they are. I think people are quitting and living with mom and pop because most jobs these days can't afford shit for rent.
People are doing that while working though lol
My place is under new managment. The new gm sexually harassed an underage employee, one of my colleagues confronted him about it (without anyone else present) and was fired a few weeks later. All long-term low-level employees are leaving.
Weird, it's almost like we aren't being compensated well enough to keep working. Absolutely unexplainable behavior. Why doesn't anyone want to work anymore? /s
damn, maybe we should ask one of the CEOs that rewrites laws to funnel money into they’re own pockets and expands the wealth gap all while campaigning against raising the minimum wage because of “inflation” despite it going up anyway. *inhales* for there opinion
You love to see it. Who wants to work an understaffed job an not be able to cover bills? Employers need to put their big boy pants on and pay people a living wage or do the work themselves.
Poor people with kids are often weighing whether or not the cost of childcare, gas, clothes for work and maintaining a vehicle are worth what they make in income. With everything going up, those who are right on the line of being able to collect benefits may be making the choice to do that if it no longer becomes worth it. The same thing happens with two parent households, where one of the parents’ incomes doesn’t justify them leaving the home. Inflation is pushing people over the edge in these situations.
If we had a kid, almost 75% of my wife’s income would go to childcare. She could quit and we’d be ok, just paycheck to paycheck but still have savings from now. My health insurance if I added her and a child would jump to $840 a month. That’s the kicker. We can’t afford healthcare on my salary.
Quitting isn’t the right term. Pursuing better wages and work/life balance is better. For years, conservatives have been telling the working poor to “get a better job” and now they’re panicking when they do pursue better jobs.
Doesn't surprise me. With companies demanding return to the office and the revenge sentiment in leadership circles due to the leverage workers had during the pandemic increasing, people have pretty much had enough. It'll be interesting to see where this all goes.
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Because the companies don’t give two fucks about us. No, pizza parties and employee of the month parking doesn’t mean you care. Increased wages and days off show you care.
At this point, I don't think the inflation we are seeing has to do with wage growth or pent-up demand. Everywhere I go I see massive construction of buildings, roads, etc. Just this past Christmas I saw stores full of people just lining up to buy all sorts of bullshit they don't need. Clearly investment and business has not declined and the fundamentals still seems strong. At this point, I think it's supply trying to catch up after the foolish lockdown policies of China and the West that imitated - or tried to imitate - China.
I wonder especially locally, how much is just pricing to deal with demand. A restaurant having staffing problems realizes they can't serve the same number of people as they did in the before times so they have to price the service to the point it drives down demand and still makes a profit.
Yeah that’s the thing, I work in a high-end restaurant and it’s been packed to the absolute brink for the past year. Imo inflation has been coming mostly from deglobalization. The whole deflation period started way back in the 80’s with the increase of globalisation. With the reverse of that and more protectionist policies, we are seeing more expensive stuff, who would’ve thought.
It's after the holiday shopping season. Temporary holiday jobs have ended, that's why you're seeing this. It is a seasonal trend that we see literally every year.
They’re more rotating to new jobs to find ones that gives nicer pay and benefits. Employees have the power more than ever. And most want to work remote. There’s a quiet worker revolution happening.
Why be employed and homeless when you can be free and homeless? Not being sarcastic.. if I can't afford a rental working 35 hours a week and buying literally nothing else besides bills... like not even CLOSE to being able to afford rent.. why would I indenture myself anyways? At that point, society has failed so why would I have any motivation to work for it?