Number Crunch
White-Collar Workers Are Quitting at an Unprecedented Rate
Is WFH a paradigm shift, or a simple carryover from the pandemic?
700,000: That’s the number of white-collar workers who quit their job in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—the highest ever recorded in a month in the bureau’s “professional and business services” category of knowledge workers.
Americans quitting their job has been a growing trend in recent months. About five out of every 100 low-wage workers quit in May, too, with higher unemployment benefits raising the bar for hourly-wage salaries.
White-collar workers make well above that government stipend, but they are still feeling overworked and burned out. The pandemic turned mass remote work from some futuristic concept into a reality — overnight. Workers don’t want to give that up and are forcing the hand of their employers essentially saying, “let me stay home or I’ll walk.”
