‘Great Resignation’ becomes ‘Great Regret’ for job-hoppers

Many employees who quit last year in the so-called Great Resignation are now reporting the Great Regret as Big Tech layoffs reduce coveted work-from-home positions.

Four-fifths of workers who left their jobs during the pandemic said they now regret it, according to a survey of 825 employees and 354 employers that the human resources firm Paychex released last month.

That share rose to 89% of those born after 1996. Although 68% of all job-hoppers told Paychex they tried to return to their former positions, only 27% of employers reported rehiring any of them.

“Those who chose to end their employment too quickly during the pandemic have been met with an unfortunate reality [that] the grass is not always greener,” said Trevor Bogan, a regional director of the workplace consulting firm Top Employers Institute.

Twenty-something workers seeking flexible remote positions with better salaries drove a record-high 50 million resignations last year, up from 47 million in 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The tightening labor market has since left many pandemic-era quitters pining for their old employers, and some are still looking for work after months of searching.

In a survey released last summer, Joblist found that 26% of job seekers who quit regretted the decision. Of those, 42% said their new jobs hadn’t met their expectations.

Many quitters flocked to remote tech jobs that have grown scarce as the COVID-19 crisis fades, said Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of Idaho-based recruitment agency RedBalloon.

“Big Tech was bloated with talent over the last three years,” Mr. Crapuchettes said. “Companies feasted on COVID subsidies and stimulus-fueled consumer demand, and they used their spending power to box out small employers from access to talent. But the great reckoning has arrived, leaving many of these larger companies gutted.”

“When times are good, people tend to assume that they’ll last forever,” said Sean Higgins, an analyst at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute. “So it’s always a bit of shock when the news isn’t suddenly so good.”

Read the full article on The Washington Times.