txaggie_08 said:

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HollywoodBQ said:

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The advantage of being a Gen-Xer is that this is our 4th major downturn in the economy.

When the dot.com bubble burst, I remember folks getting laid off and getting packages from one particular telecom company in Denver that were like 2x their annual salary.

So a lot of those folks didn't work for 2 years and after 2 years of not working found it very difficult to find a job after the money ran out.

For these Gen-Z folks who quit with no package, I think the big difference is that they are able to move back in with their parents, don't mind having roommates, or having their girlfriend/boyfriend pay their rent.

My old man (Silent Generation + Cold Warrior) made it real clear when I left for A&M that moving back home wasn't an option.

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If I'm reading the OP right, this isn't necessarily people that quit and stopped working but instead changed jobs in a search for better pay and/or benefits.

I changed jobs last year and don't regret it one day.

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I know there have been some people who just walked away or rage quit.

In my business, I deal with a lot of young Indian men and most of them will leave you for a very small amount of money (less than $10,000/yr).

During the past 6 months, we've lost about 10 people (about 20%) out of my organization. There have been a couple who definitely had regrets.

But, I don't feel any sympathy for them because in most cases, we haven't been able to get backfill reqs after they left. So they really screwed us.

Two aspects to the "great resignation". First is those who quit Job A for Job B because it allows them to work at home. I think there are jobs like Job B available as many employers have figured out they can save on office expenses. Those jobs are just harder to find, and the market will sort it out.

I do think there is a permanent shift to hybrid work schedules. For some, that may mean coming in 2-3 days a week. In my case, say I have to get some work done on my house. I can either blow a day of vacation so I can let the workmen in and get no work done at all, or organize my schedule so I can concentrate on work-from-home tasks that day.

Then there is the **** it, I'm sick of **** and retiring early aspect. I'm Gen-X with about ten years left until normal retirement. I am really starting to re-asses how much money I will need in retirement to be happy. I may just decide to pull the rip cord in five years and live a slightly more frugal lifestyle.

Had a Gen Z on my team quit last May for more $$$. We were already allowing him to be essentially fully remote. By November he was calling to see if we had an opportunity for him to come back.

I'm a 68 year old Boomer who was financially able to retire over a year ago, but went nuts without some kind of "project" to work on…

After some reflection (and the market tanking), I felt it would be a great idea to go back to work…

I've earned a six figure number and have a very productive track record in sales, but have found that most local firms are not wanting to pay crapola…

Even the companies that were THRILLED to have a mature, responsible guy "fall into their laps" don't want to pay squat…

Gen X is known for their mantra "Why Bother ?"…

I see why now…. That "nobody wants to work" issue runs both ways…. Nobody wants to work for peanuts…

HollywoodBQ said:

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Ag_of_08 said:

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You have to laugh, eveytime I see one of these "these kids won't work" ,I've seen the exact opposite complaint out of people trying to find a job ... Noone will hire.

Perfect example: Local papermill (quite a large one) has a job listed as entry level, pretty poor pay, very few benefits, as a bottom tier helper. They will not LOOK at your resume unless it has 2 years experience or an associate degree listed on it.

It goes both directions. Genz is about to learn what millenials and genx did... during recession, businesses will immediately use the limited job pool to revert to their parents work environment. Couple that with an absolute refusal to train people on the job/apprentice people, and the fact that both major parties have abandoned any presence of bringing factory jobs back to this country..... welcome to dystopia

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I'm with you on this as I've seen my Gen-Z daughter with an Engineering degree from a decent school struggle to find entry level Engineering work. Finally got hired by the Gubmint at a salary far below what she should be earning.

On the other side of the coin, I need to hire a flotilla of entry level people like my daughter who can be trained on our product. But, with my weak management and one know-it-all Pakistani naysayer in the mix, we're stuck hiring people with 20 years experience for $150K who we then have to train on our product.

And for the record, training experienced adults is actually more difficult because we have to make them un-learn what they already know in order to use our approach. We'd be much better hiring at the entry level so I can show them the right way to do things instead of going through the school of hard knocks.

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Hollywood I hope that isn't with the Army Corps of Engineers, because her salary is fine for the hours she works...compared to her classmate working 80 hours a week for a 10% more salary...just sayin

HollywoodBQ said:

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Ag_of_08 said:

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You have to laugh, eveytime I see one of these "these kids won't work" ,I've seen the exact opposite complaint out of people trying to find a job ... Noone will hire.

Perfect example: Local papermill (quite a large one) has a job listed as entry level, pretty poor pay, very few benefits, as a bottom tier helper. They will not LOOK at your resume unless it has 2 years experience or an associate degree listed on it.

It goes both directions. Genz is about to learn what millenials and genx did... during recession, businesses will immediately use the limited job pool to revert to their parents work environment. Couple that with an absolute refusal to train people on the job/apprentice people, and the fact that both major parties have abandoned any presence of bringing factory jobs back to this country..... welcome to dystopia

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I'm with you on this as I've seen my Gen-Z daughter with an Engineering degree from a decent school struggle to find entry level Engineering work. Finally got hired by the Gubmint at a salary far below what she should be earning.

On the other side of the coin, I need to hire a flotilla of entry level people like my daughter who can be trained on our product. But, with my weak management and one know-it-all Pakistani naysayer in the mix, we're stuck hiring people with 20 years experience for $150K who we then have to train on our product.

And for the record, training experienced adults is actually more difficult because we have to make them un-learn what they already know in order to use our approach. We'd be much better hiring at the entry level so I can show them the right way to do things instead of going through the school of hard knocks.

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I've been saying something like this my entire career. Until you get into executive management, with a few exceptions, there isn't a lot of use for massive amounts of experience in a lot of areas. You need a sharp person with a good work ethic who can learn and who understands the concept of not making the same mistake twice. You further need a competent team leader who can mentor that person (or group) and head off mistakes. This beats the heck out of hiring mid career people, in many cases, who think they've "arrived" and aren't willing to let go of bad habits or aren't going to buy in to a sound corporate culture.

Again, exceptions. There are some cases where there is a speed in which you can do the work factor and other cases where you just need to have seen as many situations as possible. There's no substitute for experience in those areas. That's why I mentioned executive management. That is an area you don't want filled by recent college grads no matter how smart you think they are.

They thought that Biden would come through for them again with "free" money.

DannyDuberstein said:

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Had a Gen Z on my team quit last May for more $$$. We were already allowing him to be essentially fully remote. By November he was calling to see if we had an opportunity for him to come back.

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Sure. I'll hire you back at prior salary minus 10%.

Cromagnum said:

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DannyDuberstein said:

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Had a Gen Z on my team quit last May for more $$$. We were already allowing him to be essentially fully remote. By November he was calling to see if we had an opportunity for him to come back.

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Pretty much. He was a sharp guy and we hated to lose him, but he just out of the blue quit 2 months before we were going to promote him to a new role
(we usually move people at 18 months to 2 years, so you can advance your career and your salary very consistently with us) - which he knew. But someone dangled an immediate gratification carrot in front of him, he jumped at it, and ended up in a job that turned out to be different than what he thought he was taking.

I've never carried a grudge and there have been people we rehired - usually after a few years away though, not 6 months. But we also employ a number of younger professionals like him, so I'm always mindful of making sure we are being fair and sending the right message. He basically mucked his path, and I also didn't want the message sent to everyone that you can just jump in and out at your leisure.

If a record number of people quit working in December then how is it the unemployment number in January was at the lowest point since 1969?

The simple math that if you aren't looking for a job, even if you should be, you aren't counted as unemployed.

They thought the COVID business world model was going to last forever and they permanently had the upper hand on management to make their ridiculous demands permanent even though we kept warning them it wouldn't and that recession was on the way

Ag_of_08 said:

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You have to laugh, eveytime I see one of these "these kids won't work" ,I've seen the exact opposite complaint out of people trying to find a job ... Noone will hire.

Perfect example: Local papermill (quite a large one) has a job listed as entry level, pretty poor pay, very few benefits, as a bottom tier helper. They will not LOOK at your resume unless it has 2 years experience or an associate degree listed on it.

It goes both directions. Genz is about to learn what millenials and genx did... during recession, businesses will immediately use the limited job pool to revert to their parents work environment. Couple that with an absolute refusal to train people on the job/apprentice people, and the fact that both major parties have abandoned any presence of bringing factory jobs back to this country..... welcome to dystopia

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There are a couple of issues here. I think HS degrees have been completely devalued by employers and covid has only made that worse. Also many of us Gen Xers had two years of experience by the time we graduated HS working part time jobs and developing those basic job skills of showing up on time and putting in a decent day's work. HS kids don't have the same part time employment opportunities that we used to have so employers need to raise the base standards for even the most entry level jobs.

cjo03 said:

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So of the 97 Million people who quit over the past 2 years... Paychex interviewed 825 of them?

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Not quite. They had 825 of them do an online survey

Everything looks better in the rearview because of the change in perspective and framing. There's always going to be some sense of regret with every big decision, because we look at the change with anticipation and focus on current negatives and future positives. After the decision, we tend to do the opposite and our previous state looks rosier than when we left it.

You could chalk it up to a form of loss aversion, as we feel losses as twice as much as gains and the flip of the decision flips how we see the losses and gains associated with it. When we make the decision, we are trying to stop what we see as losses or eliminate things making us unhappy. We see these as outweighing the good of the status quo because we are loss averse. After the decision, what we liked about the previous status quo becomes losses, and the previous things that made us unhappy as gains. Now the multiplier is on the other side, so we feel that we have lost a lot with the decision because of the perspective change.

I left a job a year or so ago because I hated going to work everyday and didn't feel that my contributions and expertise were very respected out valued. At a recent state of the company address at my new employer, I got two shout outs from the CEO for my work. Yet, I still have some regret over leaving. It's natural.

tysker said:

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Ag_of_08 said:

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You have to laugh, eveytime I see one of these "these kids won't work" ,I've seen the exact opposite complaint out of people trying to find a job ... Noone will hire.

Perfect example: Local papermill (quite a large one) has a job listed as entry level, pretty poor pay, very few benefits, as a bottom tier helper. They will not LOOK at your resume unless it has 2 years experience or an associate degree listed on it.

It goes both directions. Genz is about to learn what millenials and genx did... during recession, businesses will immediately use the limited job pool to revert to their parents work environment. Couple that with an absolute refusal to train people on the job/apprentice people, and the fact that both major parties have abandoned any presence of bringing factory jobs back to this country..... welcome to dystopia

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There are a couple of issues here. I think HS degrees have been completely devalued by employers and covid has only made that worse. Also many of us Gen Xers had two years of experience by the time we graduated HS working part time jobs and developing those basic job skills of showing up on time and putting in a decent day's work. HS kids don't have the same part time employment opportunities that we used to have so employers need to raise the base standards for even the most entry level jobs.

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And now we've arrived where college degrees are worthless as well. My wife's company has removed a high school diploma or GED from the few jobs where it was a minimum and have also removed college degree as a requirement for most of their professional jobs.

She's an executive and they even removed the education requirement from her job description and she's in a fairly technical field.

All done for DEI and to increase number of candidates due to high turnover rates with Covid.

Another BS article put out by the powers that be, trying to get everyone to believe they should have sucked it up and stayed idle during record wage growth. Now that companies are cutting everyone because that SAME government who flooded the market with cash decided to throw everything in reverse and raise rates as fast as possible.

• Trump and Biden ordered trillions in funds to go out since covid started.
• That money made it's way into the economy
• Everyone, including businesses, now had access to more free money (interest free if you will)
• We start to see insane wage inflation, cars, houses, and basically everything had record demand
• Inflation sets in because, DUH...
• Those record wages drive people to go make more money to keep up!? Why would you do that?
• Fed is ordered to pull the rug out from under everything, so all money starts leaving the markets
• "There is no recession, we've moved the goalposts and are lying about job creation numbers, CPI, and just about every other economic indicator."

They created this mess and then have their propaganda wing make **** up about how it is the people's fault. No, it is 100% their fault.

Yeah, I work for a top 10 fortune org and all of my peers that have left over the past 3 years have not had any regrets.

maroonthrunthru said:

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I'm a 68 year old Boomer who was financially able to retire over a year ago, but went nuts without some kind of "project" to work on…

After some reflection (and the market tanking), I felt it would be a great idea to go back to work…

I've earned a six figure number and have a very productive track record in sales, but have found that most local firms are not wanting to pay crapola…

Even the companies that were THRILLED to have a mature, responsible guy "fall into their laps" don't want to pay squat…

Gen X is known for their mantra "Why Bother ?"…

I see why now…. That "nobody wants to work" issue runs both ways…. Nobody wants to work for peanuts…

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Make your own projects. If you're bored in retirement, it's your own choice to do so. There are so many things outside of work or an office that you can do to make yourself happy.