Why Is Everyone Quitting Their Jobs? (Script & Sources)

Good morning, bad news: America is undergoing a tidal wave of workers abandoning their jobs, in what economists are calling “The Great Resignation”. Since April of 2021, about 4 million Americans a month are quitting their jobs, with a record-breaking 11 million open jobs at the end of July. But actually, this isn’t good morning bad news, this is good morning, great news. Corporations have spent billions over the last few decades bribing Congress to erode worker’s rights, decimate unions, and eliminate benefits and pensions, while wages have fallen to at an all-time low, and the cost of rent, food, childcare, healthcare, housing, and education are at an all-time high. We’re just coming off of a devastating pandemic in which the owner class of billionaires and millionaire politicians did next-to-nothing to protect us while siphoning trillions of dollars of our tax money to prop up a stock market that they own almost all of. We watched the wealthy willingly sacrifice tens of thousands of so-called essential workers, so that businesses could keep generating income, almost none of which went to paying those essential workers - and since the Senate parliamentarian said in February we couldn’t include minimum wage in the COVID bill, politicians have completely stopped TALKING ABOUT it, despite the fact that the equivalent federal minimum wage has dropped from $7.25 in 2009 to $5.62.

The fundamental exchange of labor has collapsed. In an effort to squeeze every penny possible out of exploited workers, corporations and politicians have forgotten that workers have to AGREE to sell their labor in exchange for wages, and workers no longer consent to being mistreated and exploited. When business owners scream that “nobody wants to work anymore” and “people are lazy”, they’re acting like work is an obligation or a duty, not a deliberate choice by a person to sell their labor.

And in many ways, the pandemic forced employers to go mask-off. When faced with the choice of protecting their most valuable workers at the expense of short-term profitability, many companies immediately sacrificed their workers - and now in the aftermath, they’re confused about why they can’t seem to find anyone to come back.

The Great Resignation is an obvious response to generations of mistreatment and exploitation, during a time when there is absolutely no incentive for company loyalty. In fact, this great resignation is being driven not by low-wage workers, but by mid-career employees between the ages of 30 and 45. It used to be the case that you’d work at a company your entire life, and in exchange they’d provide you with benefits and stability. Now, if you stay at a company for longer than a few years, the company treats you like a threat because you might ask for a raise, or a promotion, and the longer you stay, the more valuable you are, giving you greater leverage to ask for more, and it’s cheaper for them to fire you and hire someone younger, more desperate, and easier to exploit.

Workers have been pushed to the breaking point, and when it became obvious that nothing was changing during a crisis period that fundamentally required radical change - the breaking point broke. Mistreated workers are saying no, they’re cutting expenses, they’re moving to cheaper cities, they’re changing career paths and going back to school. The threats of starvation unless you agree to starvation wages simply don’t apply anymore. So, if you own a business and you were relying on the exploitation of workers to generate profit, then I’ve got some good morning bad news for you. You are going to fail. And then you can join the rest of us, and go work for the wages that you were offering. Let us know how that goes.