NPR

The Great Resignation? More like The Great Renegotiation

"The Great Resignation" looks mostly like workers negotiating for a better deal.
Source: Pixabay

There's been much hubbub in recent months about what's been dubbed "The Great Resignation." The popular phrase refers to the roughly 33 million Americans who have quit their jobs since the spring of 2021. Some — pointing to the difficulty of businesses in recruiting workers and spectacles like the immense popularity of the "Anti-Work" thread on Reddit — have gone as far as to suggest this record-breaking trend is a movement of young, able-bodied Americans rejecting work altogether.

But it's pretty clear that, at least for the deciding to retire early in large part because their finances have been buoyed by surging stock and housing markets. Others are secondary earners who have stayed home because they have had to while schools have closed due to COVID-19 — or because, more simply, working face to face during a pandemic sucks.

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