Why so many resignations? Blame sport for lost loyalty

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If you’re looking for reasons why quitting smoking is the hottest trend in the job market, don’t look for the answers in economic news sources.

Try the world of sports.

Some amazing moves from top college football coaches show us how loyalty to the employer is a losing game plan. I can’t think of a less discussed reason why 4 million American workers quit their jobs in October, a 25% increase in one year.

Note that two of the nation’s top soccer programs – Oklahoma and Notre Dame – have seen highly paid and successful head coaches literally launching into new gigs overnight with rare warnings or farewells.

And their 2021 seasons, both quite successful, were not over yet. Call me ‘the old school’, but I remember when people gave two weeks’ notice, at a minimum.

Clearly, these coaches’ new employers – USC and the State of Louisiana, respectively – had no qualms about a new recruit acting so brazenly. The message these recruits sent about engagement, especially with young adults, is heartbreaking.

Yes, I am fully aware that loyalty is a two-way street and sport is definitely what you have been doing for me lately.

The University of Miami, for example, put their soccer coach in an extremely uncomfortable position, essentially saying that they would keep him unless another coach quits their job and comes to school in Florida – this that he has done.

Let’s also admit that college football isn’t the only sports industry where top-level job security doesn’t exist. Three professional hockey coaches have already been fired in a season that is not even half over.

Now athletics can often be a hackneyed and poor metaphor for the business world. Yet the typical boss – whether he runs a mom-and-pop store or a corporate giant – knows that workers today think a lot like the “free agents” of the sports world: the best deal! ‘takes away.

Capitalism 101

Stopping is not always a winning strategy.

My trusty spreadsheet tells me that at the start of the economic icing of the pandemic, the national dropout rate fell to a seven-year low at 1.7%. Bosses knew it, and the typical wage hike fell to 2.6% – the smallest increase in three years, according to the Federal Employment Costs Index.

But as the country’s health and wealth rebounded in 2021, resignations hit a record 2.9% this summer. And it’s probably no coincidence that wages have climbed 4.6% in one year.

You don’t need an MBA to understand that playing the job market for the best workplace design is Capitalism 101. But the job movement in 2021 isn’t just about maximization. monetary. Statistics on quits by industry reveal a clear trend: Workers don’t want to deal with other humans.

My trusty spreadsheet has revealed that companies with high levels of consumer interactions – a tough chore in a pandemic world – have the highest growth in quits.

Start with workers in arts, entertainment and leisure companies, an industry hampered by business limitations linked to the pandemic. There were 87,000 resignations nationwide in October, up 58% in one year.

Much of the struggling tourism, hotel and restaurant industry saw 806,000 quits, up 43%.

Private education services, such as private lessons or trade schools, recorded 52,000 quits, up 49%. Personal services, the category of “other” services, recorded 133,000 quits, up 36% in one year.

And 698,000 people left their retail jobs, up 32% in one year.

Resentment boils

For much of this century, bosses seemed to have the upper hand in the job market.

The unions have lost power. Fears of outsourcing or other upheavals in the workplace have kept workers shy. And a don’t rock the boat mentality has helped others juggle work-life headaches.

The Great Recession amplified all of this. There were plenty of applicants to choose from and employees knew it, so they continued to stay loyal. Wage increases, which steadily exceeded an annual rate of 2.5% for most of the 2000s after the downturn, barely exceeded that same level until the late 2010s.

Next, consider the pace of stopping. “Voluntary” departures peaked in 2006, just before the economy collapsed, at an average monthly rate of 2.2% of all workers. In 2009, in the midst of the recession, quits were only 1.3% of the workforce as employers were just happy to receive that paycheck.

Yet a long-lasting economic expansion outside of the Great Recession ultimately changed the boss-worker dynamic. The labor market has lost most of its unemployed as an aging nation has seen more people retire.

Long-simmering resentments in the workplace began to bubble, even before COVID-19 rewrote the career management manual. That record-breaking 2006 quit rate was finally surpassed in 2018 and again in 2019. After the largely healed economy strangled by the 2020 pandemic, workers began to say goodbye to the boss on a historic frequency. fast.

Why has loyalty declined? Well I suggest you think like many sports fans when their favorite team fails.

Blame it on the coaches.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be contacted at [email protected]

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