With the pandemic, workers have been saying “I quit!” in their droves. In the US, employees packed in their jobs at such pace that a new term was coined – the Great Resignation – and alongside it, countless newspaper articles appeared about career-switching. But in the UK, are as many people quitting as we think? And would the greatest new year’s resolution be to join in? I asked Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies.
Is the Great British Resignation under way?
We’ve seen more people resign from their jobs than at any point before: it was roughly 400,000 in the three months from July to September 2021, up from 270,000 in the same period in 2019 – the last non-pandemic year. The UK has a dynamic labour market, with a high turnover, particularly in low-paying work. And when large parts of the economy reopened, more jobs were created.
What does this mean for the record-breaking 1m open vacancies we heard about last September?
It means we’re now at 1.3m.
Why can’t we fill all these vacancies?
In the UK, we don’t have an unemployment crisis, we have a participation crisis. There are about a million fewer people in the labour market than there would have been had the previous trend of more people entering the labour market continued. That trend was partly driven by immigration, but also by having more women in work and an ageing population working for longer. Last year was the first time since the 90s that the workforce got smaller, partly due to people stopping work through ill health, but mainly as a result of older people retiring, particularly women. These people weren’t working during the pandemic, due to job loss or being furloughed, and thought: “I don’t want to go back to that. The conditions aren’t great.”
So for all the headlines about young professionals leaving the rat race for a higher calling of luxury candles or whatever, it’s actually older people driving the seismic change? Pity, because I was enjoying blaming labour shortages on Brexit.
We can’t blame all of it on that. Yes, we have a lot of low-paid and insecure work, but of the 4m jobs created in the past decade, more than 90% were in relatively high-skilled work.
We’ve talked a lot about job creation and destruction. Is there such a thing as a job for life any more?
If you want a job for life, then join the royal family. But it’s a pretty hard club to get into. Otherwise, no, there isn’t.
You don’t sound fazed by that. What about the romance of “I’m a carpenter. My father was, too”?
It’s an important issue. Many communities have been defined by industries, and there can be psychological scarring when their identities are disrupted, such as during the deindustrialisation of the 1980s and 90s. But throughout history, we have always dealt with massive changes, even when they have been imperceptibly slow. It is important we train people for the jobs that exist and the ones that don’t yet, and support people so that no one is left behind. It’s what we call inclusive growth.
One last question, Tony – is this a good time to quit our jobs?
It might be a good time to ask for that pay rise – telling your boss you’ve seen there are 1.3m vacancies, and that the Institute for Employment Studies says there are loads of high-skilled, well-paid jobs out there.