Most, if not all, of the predictions about the new world that was going to replace the previous one, the one of yesterday, after the pandemic have been falling inexorably one after another. One of the ones that provoked the most social debate, right on the starting grid for the return to normality, was the Great Job Resignation. Concept that defined the voluntary and massive refusal of employees to continue working and return to their old jobs that occurred after lifting the restrictions on mobility and social contact imposed by the fight against covid.
Millions of people resisted returning to their workplaces to submit to the consequent rigidity of life and hours in exchange for meager salary compensation. To which, if the implicit expenses were deducted (costs of hiring help to care for the children while working hours were fulfilled, transportation to the workplace, etc.), they would look ridiculous. Many, the older ones, thought that the difference with a pension, in case of retirement, was not that great either. The phenomenon affected some 50 million people in the US alone and in Spain, where the phenomenon was expressed somewhat later, it was estimated at 70,000 in the past year 2022. In the first six months of this year, it has added around 50,000.
As a result, a good number of jobs remained to be filled in a wide range of activities, especially linked to the service sector. In the Spanish case, the most affected were the hospitality industry and areas related to tourism. The number of places to be covered was even estimated at around 200,000; a record in a country with unemployment rates as high as Spain.
One of the initial explanations for that Great Resignation was that the action of the States, approving aid to avoid social catastrophe during confinement, from the broadest and most general (checks for each citizen) to the most specific (aid for the most destitute). ), made us forget the harsh reality of life in capitalist society. Many believed that the world was going to be really different after the pandemic. And they considered going back to the old model of leaving the task of seeking income in the labor market in the hands of only one member of the family unit.
For a while this new story, to which the rural exodus was the perfect complement, seemed to work. As soon as activity recovered, when reopening its doors, the companies found themselves with huge mountains of orders, which augured great benefits. The break in the supply chains triggered prices, which was always a good boost to improve the income statements without too much effort. As a consequence, in many cases, companies relatively easily agreed to improve the working and salary conditions of their employees. Especially if there was a shortage of the latter.
But that mirage was shattered in no time, along with the dream that house prices were going to drop in the cities because people were fleeing en masse to the countryside. The abrupt and unexpected arrival of inflation put an end to that new order that had never been born and the idea of ??income sufficiency with respect to the needs of the majority of the population vanished.
The rise in prices has crushed wages and with great difficulty two incomes can keep the family economy afloat; even more so if there are minor children in their bosom. Debts, whether mortgage or consumer, began to weigh more and more on expenses and the return to the labor market for the optimists who had left it became, as always, an urgent need.
Returning to the starting point. In the US, labor force participation of people between the ages of 25 and 54 already exceeds the pre-pandemic percentage. And those who are returning to the pit faster are mothers with children, how could it be otherwise. When the Great Resignation began, one of its first levers was to focus on offering children adequate care. Economists such as Paul Krugman doubt that this phenomenon of mass abandonment really existed and points out that in reality many did it to find a better job or ended up self-employed, although the drop in the number of employees was a true statistical fact.
The consequences of the current return are possibly easy to predict. A greater supply of workers looking for a job will push wages and working conditions down, at the most inconvenient time, with prices going up. That partly explains that while employment has risen in the US, this has not been reflected in upward pressure on wages, as central bankers acknowledge. There is certainly inflation, but not increases in payrolls in the same proportion. But, at the same time, there is growth in the profits of many companies, especially the large ones with a high degree of control of their main markets.
In short, the result may end up in the form of a worsening of the living conditions of the majority with respect to the moments prior to the pandemic. shrinking wages with respect to the rise in prices; an already permanent higher cost of living, because even if inflation finally comes under control, it can already be ruled out that the prices of things will return to the level prior to the escalation of recent years.
But if there is a part of this phenomenon that still survives, this is the partial persistence of teleworking and, above all, the reduction in working hours. A recent study shows that in many areas of the service sector in the US, work Friday tends to disappear. A stealthy way to move towards the four-day work week.
