The great resignation that wasn’t

So, that was a fizzer then, wasn’t it? Never mind, a bunch of consultants and corporate speakers no doubt made a decent quid out of the well trodden path of taking reports out of the USA to whip up a frenzy in Australia. I am talking about the “Great Resignation”.

Remember that? Circa 2021, we were being bombarded by nonsense everywhere we looked, that we were about to give lemmings a run for their money over the employment cliff by resigning en masse.

It didn’t happen. Incidentally, I suggested as much right here on October 30th 2021.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Job Mobility report of May 2022, the number of Australians changing jobs in the previous year as a percentage of all employed people was 7.5 per cent for 2021. It was same figure for males, and 7.6 per cent for females.

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The numbers did increase in 2022, with 9.5 per cent of all employees changing jobs, (10 per cent females, 9.1 per cent males). So maybe that was the “Great Resignation.” Trouble is, those statistics are hardly anything to get excited about. If we look at statistics dating back to 1972, the historical average percentage moving jobs is 12.52 per cent (12.10 for females, 12.81 for males). So, the numbers quitting last year were below historic averages.

Maybe you are thinking we should only look at more recent trends. Fair enough. The average percentage of job changers for the last 5 years is 8.34 per cent with imperceptible differences between females and males. For the last 10 years it is 8.28 per cent.

The 2022 figures may represent a small uptick, but that may be not much more than a correction from the slightly lower than average figures for 2021. In fact, since 1972, the percentages have been steadily declining, with a blip in the late 1980s and early 1990s, probably coinciding with financial crises and subsequent recessions.

What these figures do not show is a “great” resignation trend. Given the cost of rents and mortgages now, is it perhaps not surprising that we are not changing jobs in such great numbers.