Many Who Quit During the Great Resignation Are Having Major Regrets

culture of their old job. Paul Davidson, economics and Jobs reporter at USA Today, joined us for more. Thanks for joining us, Paul, sure, thank you. Well, let's talk about the Great Resignation, all these people quitting throughout the pandemic looking for you know, a lot of different things, either being able to work remotely, better work life balance, higher pay, better working conditions. All this stuff prompted a lot of

people to leave their jobs. Until now, a lot of the stories that we had been hearing, we're all very positive type things, people moving on to bigger, better things. But this is kind of the thing I was waiting for, because you knew that a lot of people probably had regrets. And now a new poll is showing that a lot of people that didn't quit their jobs during this time are regretting it or they're just not happy with the new position that they have. So Paul tell us a

little bit about it. Yeah, I mean, it was this great phenomenon. Every month you had about four million or so people leaving their jobs, mostly to switch to other jobs. No doubt a lot of people who did quit are happy or switch jobs are satisfied. But we decided to survey it, and Harris did a survey for us, and about one in five people regret either quitting their job, and a similar percentage a similar share regret starting their

new job. But then if you dig a little deeper, and when they asked him, you satisfied enough with your job to stay in it long term or just to stay in your job. Just of those jobs switchers said they want to stay in their job, and a third are already look for a new position. So in one way or another, you know, it seems like most of the people who who quit or switch jobs are are not really content, you know, ab out and out regret it. But others you know, aren't really content inherent new jobs.

So yeah, you had sort of this kind of frenzy, I mean, driven by the pandemic and the worker shortages that the pandemics spawned. You know, lots of job openings. People really employers really struggle to find workers, and so there's a plethora of jobs out there enticing a lot of people, a lot of people, so higher wages, largely higher wages, and just you know, new and different opportunities.

They were being rude and courted by new employers and uh, you know, very exciting, you know, and in the same time they're maybe a little burnt out from working hard at their current job in their pandemic, and so they switched. But you know, when you do things very quickly, sometimes it doesn't always work out. And that seems to be what this survey is showing. You have to wonder exactly why,

you know, why they're not so happy. So through some of these other stats that we got through this, it really seems like just the change really wasn't the right thing for them, so said, the new role was different from what they expected when they got there, missed the culture of the previous job, So you know, kind of you might have been kind of happy, maybe left in a hurry or something for something bigger and better, and then man, I really missed the people there or how

things operated. So that's what a lot of people were experiencing. Some people said they were just focusing too much on the money and when they got there, it wasn't what they expected. Yeah, that's exactly right about a quarter, so they didn't really fully evaluate the pros and cons. Like you said, about a quarter, Mr. Culture, thirty six percent said they weren't really happy with the work life balance at the new job. So yeah, I think a lot of it seems to have to do with the speed

with which it all happened. I mean, you know, you have companies in many cases desperate to hire workers. I mean a lot of them have been looking for months because of these workers shortages. And so you know what some staffing people are telling me is that, you know, they're trying to get somebody in quickly, and you know, they may in some cases over state what exactly the new job is going to be. Like they may promise certain hours, very flexible, very reasonable, nine to five hours,

and then it may be something different. They may overstate the sort of content of the job, exactly what they'll be doing, making sound like it's a more creative role, when in fact it's maybe more logistical or administrative. So you know, it was a very fast process in a lot of cases. And so yeah, the people who switched may be switching because they have sort of one thing in mind that's really exciting them. It could be either wage higher wage when when they haven't had a raise

in a long time. In some cases, you know, people a lot of people who really want to stay work remotely. You know, they knew they were going to work remotely. I mean they did work remotely during the pandemic, but then they not a cases, got called back to the office at least for some days a week, or they knew they were going to get called back, so they just had it in their mind they didn't want to

go back to an office. They liked working from home. Yeah, for a lot of companies, that part of it was all was like an evolving thing and where they said, yeah, you can work remotely permanently, all that stuff quickly changed. This one was also interesting too because a lot of people just kind of rage quit. They just said, hey, I'm done with this, I'm gonna leave. Of those people try to get their job back right, that was a

survey that another company did. Yeah, I mean you think about certainly some lower paid workers in what's considered these frontline industries restaurants, retail. They're working really hard because a lot of their colleagues aren't working for whatever reason. They're they're they're workers shortages, so they're like working over time,

you know, getting a little burned out. In some cases, they don't feel like they were appreciated, and uh, yeah, a lot of people are kind of quitting their rage and again a quick move and maybe they again took another job and uh again, may not have fully evaluated the ramifications of maybe just quitting and then not having income or quitting for another job. But you know, they really didn't think through the other job in terms of

the lifestyle they're working, conditions, the benefits. So yeah, it's sort of reality setting in totally. Yeah, and you know, there's so many angles with the great resignation, the Great reshuffling they call it. You know, this is another angle that hadn't really been explored until now, So good to see that we can get some numbers on it. And yeah, a lot of people, you know, not necessarily happy having left what they did have Paul Davidson, Economics and Jobs

reporter at USA Today. Thank you very much for joining us. Sure, thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ameres and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort Today's big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us in iHeart radio or wherever you get your podcast FA