On the Front Lines of the Great Resignation
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I’ve spent the last year writing, researching, and reporting on the future of work (shameless book pre-order plug!) and I believe we’re in the middle of a genuine knowledge-work reckoning. Part of my reasoning comes from purely anecdotal data—it seems like the majority of people I talk to about their jobs (personally and professionally) are burned out, fed up, or rethinking aspects of their careers in some manner.
But there are also hard data. In mid-October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 2.9 percent of the American workforce quit their jobs in August—that’s 4.3 million people. A few weeks before the BLS report, Slack’s Future Forum (a research group inside the company that has dedicated the last year-plus to studying remote work) published their most recent. They surveyed 10,569 knowledge workers internationally and found that, “more than half of knowledge workers—57%—are open to looking for a new job in the next year. And for those who aren’t satisfied with the level of flexibility they have in their current role,
