'Quit!,' encourages former corporate worker as U.S. labor market goes through great reshuffling

Record ID: 1657909

  • Title: 'Quit!,' encourages former corporate worker as U.S. labor market goes through great reshuffling
  • Date: 2nd February 2022
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) GABBY IANNIELLO, FOUNDER OF CORPORATE QUITTER PODCAST AND WEBSITE, SAYING: "It's definitely, definitely not easy. But the finances thing, I'm still figuring that out. I'm not going to lie. We are progressing very rapidly, and we're growing every single day, and we're trying to figure out our numbers, and our projections for 2022 are going to be great.
  • Embargoed: 16th February 2022 21:02
  • Keywords: Corporate Quitter Gabby Iannello Indeed Nick Bunker employment jobs quitting unemployment
  • Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, + WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES
  • City: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, + WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Economic Events,United States
  • Reuters ID: LVA004FX4E8UF
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text:When Gabby Ianniello, 28, decided to quit her six-figure corporate job in Manhattan in February of 2021, she didn't have much of a plan.
    But what she had was a deep conviction that she couldn't go back to the office after a months-long COVID-19-induced working-from-home period, $10,000 in a savings account, and an invitation to live in her parents' house in Long Island.
    "Best decision ever," Ianniello said, looking at Manhattan office skyline from a rooftop of her boyfriend's apartment building in Chelsea. "There are times where things are stressful and challenging, but I've dealt with more stressful things on my corporate job when I was there. So, there's nothing I can't handle, and I have a great team of people who support me, and business colleagues from all over the world that I can tap if I need. So, it's been surreal. It's a nice way of saying it."
    Nearly 4 million Americans on average quit their jobs each month last year, an unprecedented wave of workplace turnover as the economy emerged from a pandemic-induced recession that, while brief, appears to be leaving a lasting imprint on the U.S. job market.
    Job openings are at historically high levels as companies seek to rebuild their staffs or pivot in response to changes in consumer demand, and there aren't enough workers to fill all the positions.
    As of December, there were nearly two openings for every unemployed person, according to data released on Tuesday (February 1) by the Labor Department.
    That mismatch means that many workers are finding themselves with more options - and taking them.
    With hiring still outpacing the level of quits, some economists say the trend dubbed the "Great Resignation" is really more of a great reshuffling as people take advantage of the tight labor market to move into jobs with better pay, more flexibility or to try something new.
    "What we continue to see is near-historic levels of people leaving their jobs," said Nick Bunker, head of research at an employment website for job listings, Indeed. "But what seems to be happening is that people are leaving their old jobs and starting new jobs. As part of the reason why we've seen such strong wage gains in 2021, one was that people are getting new jobs at higher wages, which is powering wage growth higher and higher."
    Many workers left their jobs to look for more flexible schedules, better pay and benefits, research from a personal finance website WalletHub showed.
    "Most of the big pickup in quitting that we've seen in 2021 was happening for lower-wage industries in lower wage occupations, so leisure and hospitality, retail trade," Indeed's Bunker said. "These are the sectors that have seen their quits rate pick up quite a bit and have been some of the major players when it comes to the rise in quitting."
    Companies with open positions need to cast a wider net to reach the right candidate and some are seeking more help.
    Business is booming for Goodwin Recruiting, which focuses primarily on hospitality, as more employers seek help filling openings.
    The firm is now recruiting for roughly 4,700 openings, up from about 1,500 before the pandemic, its representatives said.
    The firm also doubled its network of independent contractors that help to recruit workers, to more than 200 from about 100 at the end of 2019.
    Recruiters are also increasingly having frank conversations with employers about how they need to make their offers more appealing by raising pay, improving benefits or adding bonuses and other perks.
    Gianfranco Sorrentino, the owner of three Italian restaurants in Manhattan, Il Gattopardo, Mozzarella & Vino, and The Leopard at des Artistes, is experiencing that firsthand.
    He bumped up the pay for some kitchen roles, such as porters and dishwashers, to $18 from $15.
    He also increased the salaries for workers in management by between 15% and 20%.
    But Sorrentino, who also owns a catering business, said he is still having a hard time finding skilled managers, servers and bartenders.
    "These benefits, they didn't help at all," said Sorrentino. "I mean, we didn't see any increase in the demand of (for) job(s), especially."
    Not all people who quit are moving to better jobs.
    Some people are struggling to work because of ongoing disruptions with child care, and others have had to quit because they don't have paid sick time or are worried about facing increased health risks on the job, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
    A record nine million people said they did not work in the first few weeks of January because they were sick with coronavirus or caring for someone who was, according to a Census Bureau survey.
    Economists are dimming their outlooks for job growth in January, with more forecasting that the U.S. economy lost jobs as the Omicron wave hampered demand and led to event cancellations.
    How long will the labor shakeup last?
    "In 2022, the big thing to look out for is what happens to demand for workers," said Indeed's Bunker." Will the parts of the economy that have reopened, will they finally become reopened and then will that maybe bring some of the demand for workers down a little bit? And same with some of these goods producing sectors, will demand continue to stay hot? So really, look to see what happens to demand for workers to get a sense of what will happen to the pace of."
    Some companies are using technology and automation to get by with smaller staffs or to minimize the risk of disruptions and shutdowns when COVID-19 infections rise.
    And if the pandemic subsides, that could help to ease some of the issues making it difficult for people to work, which could in turn lower the quits rate.
    In the meantime, some workers are rethinking they do and how they spend their time.
    For Ianniello, the pandemic delivered the working-from-home opportunity and a wake up call.
    She realized she wanted to spend more time with her family, especially her grandmother who suffers from with dementia.
    She also didn't want to follow the career path of her higher-ups, who didn't inspire her.
    After being a guest on a podcast and loving the experience, she decided to create her own and help other people quit their jobs.
    "I don't want to be in a position where I'm 60 years old, and I'm retired, and I've had a career that is like, meh, It's OK, it doesn't excite me," Ianniello said. "And then my bones aren't working the same. My body doesn't work the same, and I can't actually experience life the way that I want it to. So that's the reason why I was able to quit, was reminding myself that there's so much more to live. And so I just have to give myself the opportunity of like two years of pain, maybe, two years of pain, which is temporary for 50 years of excitement."
    In her Corporate Quitter podcast, Ianniello features so called 'regular people,' who overcame obstacles and succeeded on their own to inspire her listeners around the world.
    Ianniello often shares her own story how after college, she started as a nanny living with roommates in a Brooklyn apartment, got her first corporate job and climbed a corporate ladder as an assistant, ending up in a real estate firm, her last corporate employment before launching Corporate Quitter.
    (Production: Aleksandra Michalska, Jonnelle Marte)
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