The quitting trend that started during the pandemic is still here, and it’s not going away anytime soon. Job market trends are important to real estate investors because housing markets rely heavily where people are working. In this episode, you’ll hear about how the job market has changed, why more workers are quitting or changing the way they work, and the kinds of jobs they are seeking. (1)Hi, I'm Kathy Fettke and this is Real Estate News for Investors. If you like our podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review.This quitting trend has been called The Great Resignation, but a new study by McKinsey and Co. describes it as The Great Attrition which is now turning into The Great Renegotiation. This is happening because more and more people are rethinking their work-life balance and renegotiating the terms of their employment with a greater emphasis on their personal lives.The Great RenegotiationTo get an idea of the magnitude of the change we’re seeing, data from the US Department of Labor shows the voluntary quit rate is 24% higher now than it was before the pandemic. Companies are scrambling to fill positions and keep them filled. In April of last year, there were 9.3 million job openings. Fast forward to May of this year, and there were 11.3 million job openings. That’s an increase of two million unfilled positions.As the McKinsey study points out, there’s a huge mismatch between the number of available jobs and the number of workers eager to fill those positions. What the study reveals about the current situation is that many companies are trying to fill an abundance of traditional positions with traditional workers, and that’s where things have changed. Although some 60% of workers are still traditionalists, according to this analysis, there’s a growing number of workers who won’t accept the old way of doing things.The McKinsey analysis includes survey responses from 13,000 people in six countries who answered questions between February and April of this year. 6,294 were Americans. One of the authors of the report, Bonnie Dowling, says of the work world: “This isn’t just a passing trend, or a pandemic-related change to the labor market. There’s a fundamental shift in workers’ mentality, and their willingness to prioritize other things in their life beyond whatever job they hold.” She says: “We’re never going back to how things were in 2019.” (2)Why Are the Quitters Quitting?The results show three patterns among the quitters.1 - The first is a desire to “reshuffle” their careers. That’s driving the reshufflers from one industry to another. In fact, 48% of the non-traditionalists are reshufflers. But the exchange of employees is not balanced so that some industries are losing more workers than they are getting in return.2 - The second pattern shows a desire to “reinvent” their careers. That might take the form of an employee transitioning from a traditional full-time job to one that’s not traditional. That could include work that’s part-time, temporary, remote or non-traditional in some other way. 47% of the survey participants fall into this category.3 - The third pattern is one the study calls “reassessing.” That’s when people quit their jobs altogether to take care of personal needs and reassess their priorities. They might quit to take care of children, older relatives, or even themselves. Discontent Varies from Country to CountryThe desire to quit varies from country to country with India at the top of the list for discontent. The study shows that more than 60% of the workers in India want to leave their jobs. The second highest level of discontent was in Singapore, at 49%. The other four countries in this study include Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Taken together, 40% of the participants expressed a desire to quit within the next three to six months.So what is it that makes a job that motivates workers to quit or to stay? The survey says that workplace flexibility is the most impor