The Great Resignation has become a reckoning of low-wage workers and minorities

Michelle Fox -

It turns out that the Great Resignation (the Great Resignation, in Spanish) is more of a Great Reckoning (Great Reckoning, according to a survey by the consulting firm Mercer.

In other words, the movement has more to do with who quit their jobs than with the number of people who quit.

There is no question that Americans are leaving their jobs in record numbers, with 4.4 million people saying the word “quit” in September alone.

[Applications for unemployment assistance drop to their lowest level since 1969]

However, Mercer found that only 28% of those surveyed said they were seriously considering leaving their current job, which the company says is consistent with the historical patterns found in its data.

According to the survey, it is the first-line, low-paid, minority and lower-level employees who most want to leave the company, at significantly higher percentages than the norm.

Those who earn less than $ 60,000 a year are classified as low-wage.

Concerns about basic financial well-being, like being able to pay bills or get rid of debt, has long weighed on low-wage workers, according to Melissa Swift, Mercer's America transformation leader.

"That has been a psychological stress forever," he said.

“During the pandemic we reached a point with so many psychological stress points that that group has said, 'You know what, my options are changing.

I don't need to live under this cloud forever. "

["It's a band-aid for a hemorrhage": they doubt that using oil reserves will lower the price of gasoline]

Those options include higher wages and the option to telecommute.

For Stephanye Blakely, 36, the decision to quit her job during the pandemic was easy.

A single mother living in Louisville, Kentucky, Blakely worked the night shift sorting packages for a delivery company.

When her 7-year-old son's school closed and switched to virtual teaching last year, something had to change.

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“For me, it was kind of a wake-up call and a way to reassess where I was and where I wanted to be,” explained Blakely.

Finally, she enrolled in a coding induction camp with Hack Reactor and is now a software engineer working remotely.

He went from making $ 14 an hour to more than $ 40 an hour.

“Two years ago, I didn't think too much about saving for my son's college because we were worried about what we were going to eat,” Blakely said.

[More women are quitting their jobs in the US]

Now, you are thinking of buying a house.

“There is money that goes to savings.

I am capable of making investments ”, he affirmed.

What entrepreneurs should do

To attract and retain workers, employers must embrace flexibility, address worker burnout and create a safe space for black employees, the Mercer report concludes.

They should also prioritize low-wage, front-line, hourly workers.

Compensation is an important issue, as are employer benefits.

"Some of our research suggests that employers say they can't get the talent they need, but workers say, 'They don't pay me enough for the skills I have," Swift said.

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"So there is a change in that mental calculation of what the skill is really worth in the market and you just have to readjust that," he added.

Employers should also look at how they have fundamentally established work.

"A lot has to do with banal things, like how shifts are set, how shifts are assigned, what their tasks are like or how they are managed by doing those tasks," Swift said.

"This makes a big difference in whether or not people enjoy their work and want to stay in it," he said.

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