6 ms·

I’ve been wondering how the great resignation narrative will fare with the looming recession.

vsareto 4y ago
There's a lot of ground to cover to get back to high unemployment numbers and lack of jobs (especially tech), but I don't think we're that far off from a norm, so I think the narrative is fragile.
cs137 4y ago
"Great resignation" is mostly that, a narrative. Workers aren't actually becoming powerful. They're just slightly less powerless, and everyone knows it's transient--barring an overthrow of corporate capitalism, but I think we all know that such things are unpredictable--which is why people are itchy to move now before things go back to how they were and everyone is stuck in place for a while. It's good for cappie PR to create a narrative of empowered, entitled workers. It's just not true, though. Most of the current worker attrition has to do with COVID-related disability (long COVID), gas prices, and displacements caused by rising rents. It's not that people are suddenly deciding not to work because the Capitalism Fairy is putting seed capital under their pillows--it's that people who had few options now have even fewer.
- beebmam 4y ago
  Boomers are leaving the labor market without as many people replacing them, creating a labor crunch. COVID accelerated that process. It's not much more complicated than that
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    Some are, some are coming back https://money.yahoo.com/older-americans-head-back-to-the-workforce-171922301.html https://money.yahoo.com/older-americans-head-back-to-the-wor...
    - WJW 4y ago
      Sooner or later they will leave the labor market for good though, because dead people cannot work.
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        Indeed, 1.8 million people over 55 die every year in the US.
        metadat 4y ago
        And there are 3.6 million new births every year in the USA.. where does that leave us?
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        https://populationeducation.org/resource/u-s-population-pyramid-infographic/ https://populationeducation.org/resource/u-s-population-pyra...
        metadat 4y ago
        Hey tmtd! Looks like our best bet might be to "hopefully" start hiring infants and young children into the workforce to make up for the attrition. Heaven help us :)
    - yardie 4y ago
      Early boomers had to push back retirement because of 2008 GFC. They are permanently exiting the market, now. Later boomers are going part-time or being selective. They aren't going back to blue collar and that's where things are completely fucked.
  - cs137 4y ago
    That's a factor too, and I think that as Millennials and Xers realize that the BoomerJobs--the jobs in which you actually have some choice in what you work on, where you write your own performance review because the boss sees you as a friend rather than an exploitable resource--aren't going to be allocated to them, but written out of existence, we will see an acceleration of the discouragement and "presenteeism" that are already endemic. The only reason we haven't seen 85% of society give up all at once is that some people still hold out hope that the BoomerJobs, once vacated, will be given to them. That isn't going to happen, though. People work "hard" in our society, because they have no other choice, since there is no social safety net and employers can do whatever they want in this country, but no one really cares anymore. This has manifested itself as survivable mediocrity for quite a while, but as soon as our society finds itself in any kind of serious crisis it will collapse. It almost did, during COVID.
    - mikkergp 4y ago
      > BoomerJobs--the jobs in which you actually have some choice in what you work on, where you write your own performance review Yes, boomers had better pay where a middle class blue collar job could afford you a nice house and kids in the suburbs, but this idea you quote, I'd need much more data on because the entire culture of being a boomer is much more top down, listen to your boss, do what your told then the modern culture.
      - bluefirebrand 4y ago
        Yeah but the reward for "listen to your boss and do what you're told" was often cushy overpaid jobs where you go golfing a couple of times a week with your boss and coworkers because you're all buddies. As long as you brown nosed your boss just enough.
        cs137 4y ago
        Plus, you only had to brownnose for a couple afternoons. Once they decided they liked you, you just had to be not insufferable.
      - 4y ago
- galdosdi 4y ago
  I do not agree that the popular message about increasing labor power in the labor market is beneficial for the capital/employer class. A laborer will more easily dabble with unions or with negotiating harder, etc, when they feel the market is good for them. In fact, that's exactly what we have been seeing, an uptick in union activity. Even if the underlying market strength were not real, it could be a self fulfilling prophecy. If anything the reverse is true, and a general message that it's hard to find a job is much more benefecial for the capital/employer class, who would then find laborers who are happy to accept anything they can get and have no interest in taking the risk necessary to start or join a union PS: The last time unions started doing well in the US was also a time when labor was in scarce supply just after WWII. Europe had been destroyed and the USA was the China of the day, but even moreso, in that almost the entire surviving industrial capacity of the world was in the USA. A laborer in the USA, able and willing to operate a factory machine, was thus in terrific, just terrific demand. Unionization happens in good for labor times, to prepare for bad for labor times, not the other way around.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- magicroot75 4y ago
  It's not about workers actually becoming more powerful. It's about them more frequently exercising it.
- Jistern 4y ago
bachmeier 4y ago
You raise a good point, but not necessarily the one you intended. "Looming recession" is not an accurate characterization. "Possible recession" is, and frankly, the probability might not be that high. On the one hand we see stories about the great resignation and blaming the government for overheating the economy and causing inflation. On the other we hear claims, based on limited evidence, that we're obviously heading into a recession.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  A recession is defined as a multi-month long period of declining economic performance. (Another common definition is two quarters in a row of negative growth.) Q1 real GDP growth in the US was negative. It seems quite likely that we're in the start of a recession by either of the definitions above, but we'll know with greater certainty in a little over a month when the advance estimate of the Q2 figure is released.
  - bachmeier 4y ago
    I'm thinking more in terms of the NBER's definition of a recession. We're definitely seeing evidence of slower growth (which should lessen inflationary pressures) but it's far from clear to me that we're heading into a recession in the NBER sense. Gas prices could drop, supply chain issues could lessen, and we could be back to normal growth by the end of the year. "The NBER's definition emphasizes that a recession involves a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months. In our interpretation of this definition, we treat the three criteria—depth, diffusion, and duration—as somewhat interchangeable. That is, while each criterion needs to be met individually to some degree, extreme conditions revealed by one criterion may partially offset weaker indications from another. For example, in the case of the February 2020 peak in economic activity, the committee concluded that the subsequent drop in activity had been so great and so widely diffused throughout the economy that, even if it proved to be quite brief, the downturn should be classified as a recession." https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
schnevets 4y ago
I have been thinking the same thing. I'm just returning to a job that I like after a 3-month parental leave of absence. A lot of co-workers have left our niche boutique consultancy with a decent work-life balance to join... other niche boutique consultancies who advertise a decent work-life balance (with some weirdos going to the big guys... good luck with that). From my perspective, I'm seeing the last 6-or-so months of the Great Resignation as a zeitgeist of irrational optimism. Money was cheap, "post-COVID repairs" were a goldmine of opportunity, and companies were thriving regardless of their actual performance. If the burnout is catching up to people, it is probably because "returning to normal" no longer seems so palatable. So why not try a new normal in a fresh environment? If we see a 2001-level decline, I can only hope that a desire for the good old days helps people get their priorities straight and figure out a way to balance happiness, dignity, and success that doesn't involve LinkedIn recruiters.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

There's a lot of ground to cover to get back to high unemployment numbers and lack of jobs (especially tech), but I don't think we're that far off from a norm, so I think the narrative is fragile.

cs137 4y ago

"Great resignation" is mostly that, a narrative. Workers aren't actually becoming powerful. They're just slightly less powerless, and everyone knows it's transient--barring an overthrow of corporate capitalism, but I think we all know that such things are unpredictable--which is why people are itchy to move now before things go back to how they were and everyone is stuck in place for a while. It's good for cappie PR to create a narrative of empowered, entitled workers. It's just not true, though. Most of the current worker attrition has to do with COVID-related disability (long COVID), gas prices, and displacements caused by rising rents. It's not that people are suddenly deciding not to work because the Capitalism Fairy is putting seed capital under their pillows--it's that people who had few options now have even fewer.

beebmam 4y ago
Boomers are leaving the labor market without as many people replacing them, creating a labor crunch. COVID accelerated that process. It's not much more complicated than that
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Some are, some are coming back https://money.yahoo.com/older-americans-head-back-to-the-workforce-171922301.html https://money.yahoo.com/older-americans-head-back-to-the-wor...
  - WJW 4y ago
    Sooner or later they will leave the labor market for good though, because dead people cannot work.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Indeed, 1.8 million people over 55 die every year in the US.
      - metadat 4y ago
        And there are 3.6 million new births every year in the USA.. where does that leave us?
        toomuchtodo 4y ago
        https://populationeducation.org/resource/u-s-population-pyramid-infographic/ https://populationeducation.org/resource/u-s-population-pyra...
        metadat 4y ago
        Hey tmtd! Looks like our best bet might be to "hopefully" start hiring infants and young children into the workforce to make up for the attrition. Heaven help us :)
  - yardie 4y ago
    Early boomers had to push back retirement because of 2008 GFC. They are permanently exiting the market, now. Later boomers are going part-time or being selective. They aren't going back to blue collar and that's where things are completely fucked.
- cs137 4y ago
  That's a factor too, and I think that as Millennials and Xers realize that the BoomerJobs--the jobs in which you actually have some choice in what you work on, where you write your own performance review because the boss sees you as a friend rather than an exploitable resource--aren't going to be allocated to them, but written out of existence, we will see an acceleration of the discouragement and "presenteeism" that are already endemic. The only reason we haven't seen 85% of society give up all at once is that some people still hold out hope that the BoomerJobs, once vacated, will be given to them. That isn't going to happen, though. People work "hard" in our society, because they have no other choice, since there is no social safety net and employers can do whatever they want in this country, but no one really cares anymore. This has manifested itself as survivable mediocrity for quite a while, but as soon as our society finds itself in any kind of serious crisis it will collapse. It almost did, during COVID.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    > BoomerJobs--the jobs in which you actually have some choice in what you work on, where you write your own performance review Yes, boomers had better pay where a middle class blue collar job could afford you a nice house and kids in the suburbs, but this idea you quote, I'd need much more data on because the entire culture of being a boomer is much more top down, listen to your boss, do what your told then the modern culture.
    - bluefirebrand 4y ago
      Yeah but the reward for "listen to your boss and do what you're told" was often cushy overpaid jobs where you go golfing a couple of times a week with your boss and coworkers because you're all buddies. As long as you brown nosed your boss just enough.
      - cs137 4y ago
        Plus, you only had to brownnose for a couple afternoons. Once they decided they liked you, you just had to be not insufferable.
    - 4y ago
galdosdi 4y ago
I do not agree that the popular message about increasing labor power in the labor market is beneficial for the capital/employer class. A laborer will more easily dabble with unions or with negotiating harder, etc, when they feel the market is good for them. In fact, that's exactly what we have been seeing, an uptick in union activity. Even if the underlying market strength were not real, it could be a self fulfilling prophecy. If anything the reverse is true, and a general message that it's hard to find a job is much more benefecial for the capital/employer class, who would then find laborers who are happy to accept anything they can get and have no interest in taking the risk necessary to start or join a union PS: The last time unions started doing well in the US was also a time when labor was in scarce supply just after WWII. Europe had been destroyed and the USA was the China of the day, but even moreso, in that almost the entire surviving industrial capacity of the world was in the USA. A laborer in the USA, able and willing to operate a factory machine, was thus in terrific, just terrific demand. Unionization happens in good for labor times, to prepare for bad for labor times, not the other way around.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
magicroot75 4y ago
It's not about workers actually becoming more powerful. It's about them more frequently exercising it.
Jistern 4y ago

bachmeier 4y ago

You raise a good point, but not necessarily the one you intended. "Looming recession" is not an accurate characterization. "Possible recession" is, and frankly, the probability might not be that high. On the one hand we see stories about the great resignation and blaming the government for overheating the economy and causing inflation. On the other we hear claims, based on limited evidence, that we're obviously heading into a recession.

sokoloff 4y ago
A recession is defined as a multi-month long period of declining economic performance. (Another common definition is two quarters in a row of negative growth.) Q1 real GDP growth in the US was negative. It seems quite likely that we're in the start of a recession by either of the definitions above, but we'll know with greater certainty in a little over a month when the advance estimate of the Q2 figure is released.
- bachmeier 4y ago
  I'm thinking more in terms of the NBER's definition of a recession. We're definitely seeing evidence of slower growth (which should lessen inflationary pressures) but it's far from clear to me that we're heading into a recession in the NBER sense. Gas prices could drop, supply chain issues could lessen, and we could be back to normal growth by the end of the year. "The NBER's definition emphasizes that a recession involves a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months. In our interpretation of this definition, we treat the three criteria—depth, diffusion, and duration—as somewhat interchangeable. That is, while each criterion needs to be met individually to some degree, extreme conditions revealed by one criterion may partially offset weaker indications from another. For example, in the case of the February 2020 peak in economic activity, the committee concluded that the subsequent drop in activity had been so great and so widely diffused throughout the economy that, even if it proved to be quite brief, the downturn should be classified as a recession." https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating
- whimsicalism 4y ago

schnevets 4y ago

I have been thinking the same thing. I'm just returning to a job that I like after a 3-month parental leave of absence. A lot of co-workers have left our niche boutique consultancy with a decent work-life balance to join... other niche boutique consultancies who advertise a decent work-life balance (with some weirdos going to the big guys... good luck with that). From my perspective, I'm seeing the last 6-or-so months of the Great Resignation as a zeitgeist of irrational optimism. Money was cheap, "post-COVID repairs" were a goldmine of opportunity, and companies were thriving regardless of their actual performance. If the burnout is catching up to people, it is probably because "returning to normal" no longer seems so palatable. So why not try a new normal in a fresh environment? If we see a 2001-level decline, I can only hope that a desire for the good old days helps people get their priorities straight and figure out a way to balance happiness, dignity, and success that doesn't involve LinkedIn recruiters.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]