So millions of people are voluntarily quitting their jobs in what economists are calling the great resignation and it's leaving many workplaces seriously understaffed. We talked with UW business Professor Thomas Gilbert about why we're seeing so many help wanted signs right now and where we go from here. Help wanted signs are a good thing, right? This is a signal that demand customer demand. Consumer demand is backup, probably even at back to levels. Then before the pandemic. And so that's good. Like we shouldn't look at help wanted signs and say all this is a terrible situation. There is one underlying factor that is still there for why people are unwilling to go back to work, and that's fear there is still some surveys. I was looking at some data. There's some surveys that search that you know, three to four million people as still saying, I am fearful. For my health, for the health of my loved ones, by children my family still young children still cannot be vaccinated, and there are people who are fearful of bringing the virus back to their home and therefore unwilling to take jobs where the risk of contingent is higher. I want to get back to the wine a moment, but I do want to ask a question that I've heard a lot of people mention is that, you know, during the pandemic some workers were actually making more money, staying at home because of that extra $600 a week from the government with unemployment benefits has that had an impact on what we're seeing now. So for sure it's it's played a role, right? People were able to say, OK, well, I can afford to stay home. Maybe I was laid off or or there's furloughs or whatever and I can afford to stay home to rethink my life. To rethink my career because of these extra unemployment benefits. And then it became well if I, you know the argument would suggest. Indeed if I'm paid just as much, there might replacement wages one to want to stay home, then why would I go back to my old job? And that answer seems to make sense. We have a very interesting summer that happens where some states remove these extra pandemic unemployment benefits back in June and some states waited until September when they expired and the difference is really minimal. So yes, the states with these other extra unemployment benefits were removed in June. They got a decrease in unemployment. There was a little bigger than in other states, but that difference is so small. What about some of the issues that? Unfortunately, impact women more than men is the issue of child care. There is, literally. It's almost impossible to find. I know this as a mother myself and therefore women are not as able to go back to their old jobs. Is that something you're seeing? Kind of really affect the economy as a whole. It's definitely affecting on the women reentering the economy. For sure. The female labor participation rates is at its lowest. It's been decreasing. Through the pandemic and we are seeing nothing suggesting it's going to go back up and I think a lot of it is easily tracked back to well. If my children cannot. My young children cannot go to daycare and there's still someone sitting like children who school age. Children seem to be back in school, but a lot of volatility in that area as well, and this is leading to, yeah, to an inability to go back to work added on this fear. Young children are still not vaccinated, and I probably believe as a parent myself, right there is some fear that. We can, I'm vaccinated, I'm OK, but my children are not and I can see people making a decision. OK, I I I don't want to take that risk. It's a risk return tradeoff, and I'm not willing to take that risk. It really seems like as we talk about this, if there are so many factors and altogether it makes up one big thing but just one last thing I want to hit you with EU S Labor Department just reported that 4 million people voluntarily quit their jobs in June. What's behind that? And what is it going to take? To come back from this, there's many factors as you said, and so I think we could almost say, well, we're not sure which factor you know dominates any of these, but we really think that this what I would call reallocation of Labor OK is a big factors like this has been a time where I've had time to think added unemployment benefits have given more, giving me a financial support to rethink where I want to live, where I want to work, what kind of career I want. Yeah, and people are thinking people. Removing people saying well I I don't want this old job back, I want something better. I want something with better hours with a better commute and so people quitting again. Going back to help wanted sign being a good thing. People quitting is also a good signal because someone quits only if they think they can get something better. Yeah. And so we should look at this and say you know, maybe this. There's a big rethinking of EU S labor markets. Or a big chunk of the US labor market, some reallocation across industries. Across types of work, and that's that's good, but this might take time. This is a transition. This doesn't happen in a month. This doesn't happen in two months. This might take six months. This might take a year for people to make these decisions, move their families, take different kinds of maybe having to do some retraining, some education to find something better.
