Turning The Great Resignation Into The Great Opportunity
The last several years have been a hard moment for a lot of companies around the world. This is likely to be remembered as the most empowering for workers and the most demanding for businesses in the United States’ history.
The Great Resignation is an economic trend in which employees voluntarily resign from their jobs en masse. In July 2021, people handed in a resignation notice—4.3 million to be exact. In September, quitters set yet another record. And again in November. With each passing month, the Great Resignation was outpacing itself into the Great-er Resignation. A massive talent pool has turned the tables on businesses, leaving aside a small group of people who choose to leave the job during the pandemic.
What’s causing the Great Resignation?
Aside from that, there are a number of other reasons people are seeking a change. For some workers, the pandemic precipitated a shift in priorities, encouraging them to pursue a ‘dream job’, retirement, or transition to being a stay-at-home parent. There is a consensus that during the pandemic, people quit their jobs to find something more meaningful, connected with the working from anywhere culture and that makes sense for a new way of work-life balance. For many, the decision to leave came as a result of the way their employer treated them during the pandemic.
While the Great Resignation implies people are leaving the workforce, a large swath of workers are simply reconfiguring what their careers look like. Many people have had to reassess their occupations and careers as a result of the present pandemic, moving from low-wage employees to highly trained and well-paid workers. Some are leveraging the current hiring crisis to get into better positions. Others have decided to work for themselves – with the number of self-employed workers in the US rising by 500,000 since the pandemic. Many more, however, are simply shifting into new industries and careers that offer higher wages or align more with their values.
Big picture
Workers want more flexibility and control over where they work—and they’re willing to quit over it. Indeed, among all workers, 57% are open to listening to offers next year. That figure is a staggering 71% among workers who aren’t happy with their current level of flexibility.
The Big Resignation may easily be misinterpreted for anti-work laziness at first glance. However, we believe that the quitting phenomenon is a sign of optimism and change. It’s a revolution against employment, not an anti-work movement. It’s not an anti-work movement, but an anti-employment revolution. It’s an entrepreneurial awakening. Workers are quitting to do better and think bigger. They’re still looking to contribute to our economy, just in a different way.
Quitting is just half the story.
In 2021, as resignations reached a two-decade high, the United States saw a stunning 5.4 million new business applications in the same time frame. According to the United States Census Bureau, there were 1.4 million new businesses registered in September 2021, the highest of any year. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics And, most recently, December 2021 saw the largest number of new company applications ever recorded.
Given the time, this new business boom could explain the current labor shortages as well as the current employment market’s hotness. Our current entrepreneurial awakening could very well be the cause of the increase in startups.
The data from Google searches appears to back up this theory as well. In 2021, searches for ‘how to start a business’ outnumbered those for ‘how to get a job,’ according to Google’s Year-In-Search report. A turbulent year seemed to have prompted people all over the world to look for new entrepreneurship opportunities (interestingly, the number of people looking for affirmations in 2021 was higher than any previous year, which has me wondering if people have been manifesting entrepreneurship for themselves…).
Every new business begins with an entrepreneur’s decision to ‘select out’ of restricting standards and inflexible expectations, not of effort. A worker’s life is no longer centered on his or her job. Work has to adapt to the demands of life, and despite its challenges and uncertainties, entrepreneurship is a terrific method to do so. During the last two years, the cry for independence seemed to drown out the doubts, and it continues to do so.
A lot of employees already took the entrepreneurial leaps of faith. They’re inspiring a movement of others who are also having existential thoughts about their vocation.
How the Great Resignation and the Great Start fully unfold is yet unwritten. In the meantime, the power battle between entrepreneurship and anti-employment emotions will continue, and it will be interesting to see what salary and flexibility incentives established companies will use to entice people back to their businesses in the future.