Quitters, part 3
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2021
⏱️ ? minutes
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Summary
A record number of Americans quit their jobs this year. Today for our special series “Quitters,” economist Darrick Hamilton examines why that is — and why he thinks it might be a good thing.
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Many Americans have reconsidered their relationship with work this year.
There’s lots of reasons for that — an ongoing pandemic, stagnant wages and a severe labor shortage all made work harder.
But Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and urban policy at the New School, says that workers also had more flexibility than ever before, thanks to government stimulus and expanded unemployment. And he wants us to reframe this not as a “Great Resignation” but as a moment of worker empowerment.
Today on Post Reports, we’re bringing you the third installment in “Quitters,” a three-part podcast series about a few of the millions of Americans who quit their jobs this year.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Give a helping hand this holiday season with the Washington Post helping hand. |
| 0:04.6 | This is John Kelly and I'm writing about Bread for the City, Friendship Place, and Miriam's Kitchen over the next few weeks. |
| 0:11.1 | Go to posthelpinghand.com to learn more and donate today. |
| 0:16.8 | Hey, it's Martine. |
| 0:18.2 | Today we have the last installment of our series on quitters, hosted by our executive producer Maggie Penman. |
| 0:25.2 | If you have not yet heard parts 1 and 2, go back and check them out. |
| 0:28.9 | Okay, here's Maggie. |
| 0:31.3 | This week we've been talking a lot about people who made the decision to quit their jobs this year. |
| 0:36.9 | And where that's leaving their employers. |
| 0:41.5 | A lot of people have called this phenomenon the Great Resignation, the Great Resignation, |
| 0:46.5 | hit retail like a title wave. |
| 0:48.5 | There has been a tsunami of job resignations in the US workforce recently. |
| 0:52.3 | Still, there are many workers. |
| 0:54.0 | But we talked to an economist who wonders if that's the wrong way of looking at it. |
| 0:58.8 | Maybe we shouldn't even call it the Great Resignation. |
| 1:01.5 | Maybe we should talk about a shift in power. |
| 1:04.4 | This is Derek Hamilton. |
| 1:06.1 | He's a professor of economics and urban policy at the new school. |
| 1:09.9 | And he's been studying why people are quitting their jobs at record numbers right now. |
| 1:15.0 | Maybe we should talk about it as a way where now we have a balance that's moving in a direction |
| 1:20.8 | where people are better empowered to make decisions that are healthy for their lives. |
| 1:25.9 | Hamilton says this trend could be the result of a lot of things. |
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