While hundreds of thousands of people around the world strive to find work in the coronavirus-affected labor markets, meanwhile millions of U.S. workers are quitting their jobs.
The most affected industries are accommodation and food services, retail, and the healthcare sector. In August, some 892,000 workers left jobs in accommodation and food services and 721,000 quit retail positions. The healthcare and social assistance sector also took a hit of 534,000 resignations.
Economists state that there is no single factor driving this workforce behavior. Low-wage jobs often do not offer opportunities for career growth and the earnings fail to keep pace with the rising prices. The collapsed childcare sector has increased daycare costs, often making it unaffordable. Those who are still employed face increasing responsibilities and demanding working conditions that are underpinned by fears of the next coronavirus variant.
In a conversation with DevelopmentAid.org, Elena Raileanu, a Boston-based HR expert, confirmed that many vacancies have been created as more and more Americans quit their jobs.
“The recruiting landscape becomes a candidate’s market where job seekers can dictate their salary and work-life balance” she added. According to the HR expert, those who were caught in the COVID layoffs “prefer not to return to their previous jobs because unemployment benefits pay them enough to lead a normal life that also leaves room for their hobbies”.
The New York Times asserts that with inflation going up, those employers who increase wages may also need to continue to increase their prices to cover their costs. However, boosting wages to attract and retain workers is not enough to remain competitive in the labor market, experts say. It will be necessary to enhance career growth prospects, provide skills training, remove the traditional barriers related to education requirements and also offer more flexibility.
Data from large employers across the U.S. suggests that vaccination mandates do not play a significant role either. According to a local NBC25 affiliate, about 99% of the workers at Michigan’s Henry Ford Health System complied with the vaccination mandate, while 400 healthcare workers left their jobs due to this mandate. In Washington State, University of Washington hospitals reported that 97% of employees had been vaccinated by the end of September. Healthcare workers are not the only ones subject to the state’s vaccination mandate, educators and public workers face the same requests.
Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, wrote on his page that:
“[Workers] simply don’t want to return to backbreaking, low-wage shit jobs, …they are now engaged in the equivalent of a general strike.” In light of the fact that the number of job openings is at a record high and there are more job vacancies than unemployed people, he emphasized that “corporate America wants to frame all this as a ‘labor shortage’ but that’s not what’s really going on. In reality, there’s a living wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a health care shortage – and American workers are demanding an end to all these shortages. Or they won’t return to work.”
