A Record 4.5 Million Americans Quit Their Jobs In November (bloomberg.com) 128
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A record 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November while openings remained elevated, highlighting persistent churn in the labor market. The increase in departures was broad across industries and pushed the quits rate up to 3%, matching the most in data back to 2000. Meanwhile, the number of available positions fell to 10.6 million from an upwardly revised 11.1 million in October, the Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed Tuesday.
The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a rise to 11.1 million job openings. While the drop was the largest since April 2020, vacancies remain well above pre-pandemic levels. The unprecedented level of quits -- including a record 1 million in leisure and hospitality alone -- suggests a lingering struggle for employers to retain talent. Meanwhile, the month's increase in hiring showed companies were able to make at least some headway filling vacancies. The data come ahead of Friday's monthly employment report from the Labor Department, which is currently forecast to show that the U.S. added 420,000 jobs in December. [...] Total hires were little changed in November at 6.7 million. Layoffs and discharges were also steady.
The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a rise to 11.1 million job openings. While the drop was the largest since April 2020, vacancies remain well above pre-pandemic levels. The unprecedented level of quits -- including a record 1 million in leisure and hospitality alone -- suggests a lingering struggle for employers to retain talent. Meanwhile, the month's increase in hiring showed companies were able to make at least some headway filling vacancies. The data come ahead of Friday's monthly employment report from the Labor Department, which is currently forecast to show that the U.S. added 420,000 jobs in December. [...] Total hires were little changed in November at 6.7 million. Layoffs and discharges were also steady.
I want to quit too. (Score:1)
But there's stuff I like about my job. Such as money and health insurance.
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So you're a teledildonicist?
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Re:I want to quit too. (Score:5, Interesting)
It takes away what is now one of the top few bludgeons to suppress uppity workers: The threat to you and your family's health if you dare get sick.
Re:I want to quit too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. It is a tool of oppression. US propaganda and a lot of useful idiots (including some here) will probably manage to spin that in some deranged way as a "freedom" though.
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But there's stuff I like about my job. Such as money and health insurance.
If you have health insurance, you are literally elite in the USA. The bulk of people quitting don't have access to health insurance and aren't making a lot of money. So all bets are off when facing a pandemic.
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The US doesn't have universal healthcare, but it's not like most people don't have it.
In fact, in any given year, it's usually around 90% of people are insured.
I.e., if you have healthcare in the US, you aren't elite. You're quite literally normal.
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I have serious doubts about the correctness of that claim. The US doesn't have universal healthcare, but it's not like most people don't have it. In fact, in any given year, it's usually around 90% of people are insured. I.e., if you have healthcare in the US, you aren't elite. You're quite literally normal.
You don't even know your own country and what's going on here. You can have insurance and still be unable to use it because of the high cost, copays as well as terms that allow insurance to deny coverage for anything beyond an annual checkup. I've actually seen people denied medical costs for the treatment of animal bites because that treatment didn't fall in the "preventive care" category. From https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/ [kff.org]
In 2019, 73.7% of uninsured adults said that they were uninsured because the cost of coverage was too high.
That's just one study out of
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You don't even know your own country and what's going on here. You can have insurance and still be unable to use it because of the high cost, copays as well as terms that allow insurance to deny coverage for anything beyond an annual checkup.
You backed that up with a link about uninsured, which are again, a minority of individuals.
In 2019, 73.7% of uninsured adults said that they were uninsured because the cost of coverage was too high.
Of course 73.7% of the 10% who are uninsured are uninsured because the cost is too high. What was your point?
Nobody is playing semantics, you're suffering from an inability to understand what you read.
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It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. I have dental insurance for example however it doesn’t cover a whole lot beyond general care. I lost a front tooth back when I was in the Marines and paid out of pocket for both bridges, about $6,000 each time.
I was in the hospital this past year with a punctured intestine and medical insurance paid for all but $5,000 of the bill.
Fortunately my career is such that the last two expenses were something I could take care of without too much of a probl
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It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. I have dental insurance for example however it doesn’t cover a whole lot beyond general care. I lost a front tooth back when I was in the Marines and paid out of pocket for both bridges, about $6,000 each time.
Ya, dental insurance sucks in general. That's a whole different category of shite.
I have "good" dental, and I still pay out the ass whenever I need work done. For whatever reason, dental insurance in the US sucks ass.
I was in the hospital this past year with a punctured intestine and medical insurance paid for all but $5,000 of the bill.
Which is fantastic.
Fortunately my career is such that the last two expenses were something I could take care of without too much of a problem.
Even if you couldn't, the latter is something you could pay off, over time, with no interest. Sure, it's not as good as free, but it's also not terrible.
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The weird thing about the U.S. right now is that everyone has access to quality healthcare. Obamacare ensured us of that. The problem is that in order to deliver quality healthcare to everyone, the only thing they could get passed was a bill that gouged the middle-class. If you're poor you get quality healthcare for free. If you're upper-middle class or higher, the cost of healthcare is negligible. If you're middle class it's a major expense.
Obamacare is better than what we had before, which is closer to wh
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But in reality, many remain uninsured, and those insured still cannot get the full benefit of coverage because of high costs, copays, etc. 90% of the population is covered... on paper. The execution of health coverage is what matters.
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I want to quit too. But there's stuff I like about my job. Such as money and health insurance.
Well I left my last company, but like many of those who quit I went to another company who pay me and provide health insurance. So there really isn't anything stopping you from quitting if your primary reasons are to keep a paycheck and insurance. That just means you cannot retire.
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I wonder how many of those people out of work are among the same adventurous doers reportedly quitting their jobs and/or moving to the country and/or buying new homes since the recent economic environment dictates such?
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Yep that's the plan...Start an open source project and mooovve..., to the country!
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One that uses imperial units of measurement.
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If you want to find Imperial units still in use, just go to England and take a look at a street sign
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Miles are the same in the UK and USA. If you really want to see Imperial units in action, look at how your car's fuel consumption (miles per gallon) or buy a pint of milk at the supermarket or a pint of beer at the pub. Or even better, jump on a set of scales and see if you can remember how many pounds are in stone (although TBH these days you'll more likely trying to remember kg to lbs).
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But the main point, is that Imperial units are still in wide use in Britain, even officially. I was slapping back at an attempted dig against the US.
Another fun fact, the US has more miles of highway labeled in km/h then the UK.
My Brit friends still give their weight solely in stone... which for whatever reason, is harder for me to remember the conversion for than kg. But it's whatever. My Canadian fr
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The US doesn't use Imperial units. They use US customary.
But in the US it's customary to be an imperialist, so I don't much difference in it.
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I don't think imperialist is accurate, though.
The US definitely went through a phase where it was hard to draw a distinction between it and any other imperial power... but its role in today's world is markedly different from that.
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One that uses imperial units of measurement.
That bad? My condolences.
Re:I want to quit too. (Score:5, Funny)
The one that invents most of the medical stuff.
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Having a massive wealth gap isn't something to brag about.
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Envy is no way to go through life.
Re: I want to quit too. (Score:2)
Wanting to survive in something other than squalor and being resentful of those who tip the scales isn't envy. They sure do want you to think so though.
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Sure would be nice for children to have breakfast before going to class. Oh well, I guess they can learn an important lesson on not envying others.
I hope that you realize there is a difference between having a nice new car and having a vehicle in order to get to work reliably. Wanting one could be considered envy. The other is wanting enough to be a productive member of society.
If life were just a competition where you have winners and losers. Then this thread's comments about envy and wealth would be reaso
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When you're rich you must you point out how everyone else must be too lazy to work hard and be rich like you are. It's sort of the same as bragging about a wealth gap, but there's a layer of indirection (or misdirection).
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Having a massive wealth gap isn't something to brag about.
Sure it is, if you're on the wealthy side.
Nope. A massive wealth gap is a failure of society. If you are on the wealthy side, you probably share responsibility for that failure.
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Why is a wealth gap a bad thing?
If everybody has enough, why is it bad if some people have more?
Would you prefer that everyone is miserable?
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Enough would be necessities like food, clothing, education, healthcare, and transportation. Unfortunately not everyone in the US has these things. But even after repeated attempts my virtual guillotine NFT start-up ICO is not going well.
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When the wealthy made 50 times what the average was, they could get any *one* thing they wanted.
When the wealthy make 500 times what the average is, *and* they buy cheap taxes (0.3%+0.2%+17%) vs (3.2%+15%+30%) *and* they get preferential law enforcement, including practical immunity from draconian drug laws (wealthy entertainer pays $4000 in fines- poor hispanic mom goes to prison for 12 years), and they use that extra wealth to buy *everything*- all the good beach houses- all the lodges at ski resorts- all
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That "argument" does not work. If everybody is "miserable" if all have the same, then if some have more many will have less and be even more miserable and definitely will not "have enough", given the same total wealth. I guess you did not think that one through.
Also, my statement was about a "massive wealth gap" and so were the postings before. I guess you did not really read them.
A moderate wealth gap is not a problem. It is quite normal to arise. A moderate wealth gap is also one that people can overcome
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if some have more many will have less
Economics is not zero-sum.
If it were, countries with few billionaires, such as Somalia and Mozambique, would also have few poor people.
That is the opposite of reality.
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Oh, economics is not zero sum? OK, then quit asking "how are we going to pay for xyz"
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Further to this, it DOES NOT MATTER how fast you "grow the pie" when the rich are taking it faster than you can grow it. It DOES NOT MATTER how fast the Fed prints money and hands it to the already-rich, because IT WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH FOR THEM.
Now, tell me, how does this differ from a closed economy? It doesn't. It's a distinction without a difference in reality.
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A wealth gap is okay. But psychology has long accepted that people who have less than others feel a level of unhappiness relative to the wealth disparity of the top earners, while people with wealth do not become happier the richer they are above certain levels (basically just becomes diminishing returns to 0).
This is why history is littered with times in which at the point this gap becomes large enough, the unhappiness becomes large enough to spur people into taking action they otherwise would not have ins
Re: I want to quit too. (Score:2)
Everyone doesn't have enough. Luckily, the rich haveame figured out that a LOT of poor people are not only ignorant, they're also petty. They went so far as to use a political party to leverage that pettiness and ignorance into votes and thus power.
They stay in power by making it as difficult as humanly possible to remove them by passing laws that make it harder, and more ineffective, for those who oppose them to vote and make their voice heard. It's simple...
Make people's lives miserable by how you behave,
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Do you live in an alternate universe? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is some good stuff coming out of our public universities but funding cuts there mean that there's a lot less of the kind of basic research that doesn't turn profits in 5 to 10 years like a corporate CEO wants. It's actually going to be a real problem in another 10 or so years I think.
The MRNA vaccines were developed with tech created in the 60s and 70s. There's plenty of other examples of that where all this cutting-edge tech is built on a foundation of research that's 30 or 40 years old. That's right around the time we started slashing funding to the public universities so we could cut taxes. Eventually we're going to run out of breakthroughs from the basic research we funded back then and we're going to see a much slower rate of progress. Kind of like how our housing market is going to shit because infrastructure and inventory made before 1980 has finally been fully used up.
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Many people also think the programmable computer was invented in the US. Turns out, just as the car, it is German invention..
Major props to Konrad Zuse, but your example was phrased just so carefully. Take a look at the history of computers and count how many times Germany is mentioned. https://www.computerhope.com/i... [computerhope.com]
Trying to pin down who had the "first" telescope, or computer, or wireless transmitter, or car, or airplane is very difficult. Each invention was being worked on in multiple locations by multiple people, all building on each other's work. Almost none of the above mentioned inventions were done in a vacuum. (Fo
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I am in no way claiming that these were done in a vacuum. But claiming that the US has an massive edge in science and technology (as so many US citizens like to do) is not an accurate reflection of reality and basically has never been one.
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Invents stuff like for-profit drugs, eh? (Score:2)
The AC Subject led here? What is it about destroying rational discussion that motivates the AC trolls? Anyway, I changed the vacuous Subject, and I also want to complain about the moderation. Pretty sure the dominant Funny mod is some sort of attack on your position.
Your position is wrong, but it's still a legitimate position that should be addressed on its demerits. Funny (not haha) coincidence again. I'm reading a relevant book. (Or just another delusion of relevance brought on by my zen-collapsed state?)
Re: I want to quit too. (Score:1)
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Maybe what we're told is food, isn't actually food..
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But there's stuff I like about my job. Such as money and health insurance.
I like the money too but which third world country do you live in that doesn't have publicly funded health care?
In the country that has invented mRNA vaccines, probably the most important technological advance in vaccines in several decades. Also, US has several publicly funded health care systems (VA, Medicare, Medicaid) and they all suck. That is the general case. NHS in UK also sucks from long lines, insufficient staff and the most capable physicians leaving for the private sector. Germany and Switzerland do not have the fabled "public option". As opposed to the USA which has a strange non-market system of local m
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Good for the unemployment numbers. (Score:2)
Makes sense (Score:2)
If you were on the fence about retiring but already had the funds, then it seems like a good time to check out of the rat race.
A lot of boomers are probably tired of the COVID hassle and just want to move somewhere warmer.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Funny)
Do you man a gloryhole or something?
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I have enough saved up outside of my retirement accounts due to the last decade of market growth to cover about 2.5 years of my income.
I doubt I'm alone. When you have throwaway income, you eventually run out of stuff to buy, and start tossing it into the market.
It's so easy to get picked up by a large tech company these days, that I can see why the pull to just... quit for a while exists.
millenials are killing X (Score:2)
Oblig. (Score:1)
inflation baby (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't forget that other experienced people have already left so you will need to work harder to fill in for them. Oh and "as a cost cutting measure we are going to [make your life just a little more miserable in some creative way]".
Are you my previous employer? You sound amazingly like them.
Re: inflation baby (Score:3, Interesting)
Discussion with boss... Since June 2020, my food is up 30%, gas is up about 80%, and rent is up 20%.
That looks like your boss or whoever he listens to on the radio just put their finger on a chart and walked back to the most recent minimum and cherry picked June 2020, the middle of COVID. Why would you do any price analysis STARTING in the middle of COVID 19, the middle of 2020??? June 2020 had almost the lowest oil prices in the past fifteen years, because of COVID related speculation! So are you looking at historically high prices or did you start at a historical low point to get a scary sounding 80%
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Admittedly, the gas was low then but it is up 15% now over what it was before COVID.
My food prices never went down in COVID. I track all that I buy and haven't changed my purchase habits. My food bill is up that much despite the fact that the things I buy are almost entirely generic.
Rent has seen its biggest jumps ever in my area. Home prices are ridiculous as well. Some people seem to think this is good, but I don't see how. I guess if you're willing to move to a cheaper area you could capitalize. Otherwis
They're way ahead of you (Score:2)
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Food is up quite a bit I have noticed. Gas, on the other hand, I can't reason why people are complaining about it. I remember taking a photo of an old gas station near my home in 2006, and the posted gas price for regular in TX was $2.73.
Yesterday in the same region 15 years later, I paid $2.79.
Rent is nuts. Food is high. $4.50 and up per pound of ground beef, bread is higher, milk is up a lot over the past two years. The cheapest eggs I see are almost $3 a dozen. Milk is $3 a gallon for the standard stuff
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I've always had a difficult time understanding/comprehending the pissing and moaning about the price of milk. In my household of four we buy milk a gallon at a time and have to freeze at least half of it to keep it from going bad before we can use it up. Are people using milk as a water substitute or something? Even when I was a broke ass teenager with a part time job doubling the price of milk wouldn't have significantly impacted my budget.
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I use June/July 2020 because that is when I first noticed prices on things that had not gone down during the lockdown start their expected (because of the amount of money dumped into the economy) ramp up.
A dozen eggs here in Central Florida is at $2. Prior to the pandemic they had hovered around $1 most of the time. Milk has gone up from a relatively steady $2.68 a gallon before the pandemic to $3.49 today. Brand name sodas have gone from routinely being on sale for $1.19 for a 2 liter to $1.89. I purchase
Probably thanks to President Biden (Score:4, Insightful)
With the stock market hitting new records,* people's investments have paid off and are now allowing them to retire. Retirees make up the largest percentage of those leaving work.
Thank you president Biden for all your work making their dreams possible.
* The S&P 500 had 68 new highs in 2021, the second highest number of new highs under any president. Also, president Biden continues the winning streak of Democratic administrations [marketwatch.com] far outpacing Republican administrations when it comes to stock market performance.
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If you retire, you're not quitting, you're retiring. I'm not sure that it's counted in the same way, if at all?
For example, when I retired last year, there was no exit interview as it was obvious why I didn't want to work there anymore, I was able to retire.
Is this different in the USA?
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If you retire, you're not quitting, you're retiring. I'm not sure that it's counted in the same way, if at all?
For example, when I retired last year, there was no exit interview as it was obvious why I didn't want to work there anymore, I was able to retire.
Is this different in the USA?
To my knowledge, the count is the total number of people who left a job for any reason. It doesn't matter if you quit, retired, or moved on to another job, you left your original job and that is what is counted.
Here is an article from October [forbes.com] outlining how baby boomers are leaving jobs by the droves, which in turn affects these numbers. The Pew Research Center had a similar article [pewresearch.org] from 2020.
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Cool, thanks, good explanation & article. ... is still working as she's not (yet) able to retire comfortably, due to various decisions she's made.
I'm not a boomer, being early GenX, but was lucky enough to be able to retire early and comfortably. My older sister, though, is a boomer, and
Re:Probably thanks to President Biden (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who says “Trump brought us good jobs and a good economy” is basically declaring “My opinion is baseless crap. Please ignore me”. Same goes for Biden or any other president.
Re: Probably thanks to President Biden (Score:2, Informative)
As a single person, no, but as the leader of a party with a media machine behind it, sure. Trump pushed a huge tax cut through and leaned (with his media partners) on the Fed to keep rates artificially low. The result is a goosed stock market, soaring home prices, and the inflation we're seeing today. He fumbled the COVID response which ballooned unemployment and crushed whole sectors of the economy. Biden hasn't done much in his first year. COVID is getting bad again, the rich are still buying up ho
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Trump pushed a huge tax cut through and leaned (with his media partners) on the Fed to keep rates artificially low.
Ahh that explains why the European technology companies listed on the AMS stock market spiked. Thank you Trump for cutting taxes to someone none of us have anything to do with! /sarcasm
No you're making the same mistake as the GP, you think that this tax break has had an influence whereas in reality there are far larger and way more powerful market forces at work.
Wait ... Sorry I'm reading and addressing you post line by line. You said straight after that Trump crushed the economy? But the stock market was u
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"Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same numbers to draw different conclusions" --Evan Esar (b. 1899)
Here's the solution. (Score:1)
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
Perfect solution for that shortage of truckers.
Hospitality Industry (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Hospitality Industry (Score:4, Informative)
Not just that, but having to face idiots and overly entitled people and karens and other people is what makes it miserable.
Facing people is one thing - most are respectful and most will keep a reasonable distance apart. It's the idiots that however ruin the whole thing. Just an anti-masker going off on their tirade is easily enough to make someone quit. And since these idiots only intend to cause a scene and be as big an asshole as possible, you can't even help the unfortunate people stuck behind them.
it's a miserable no-win situation. Dealing with the public is unpleasant enough Not that the person at the desk can even do anything since the policy is dictated either by the government or management, and the poor lackey they go off in front of has zero power to alter or do anything about.
So just to be clear on what's happening (Score:2)
As they retire they free up better jobs that Gen X/M/Z are moving into in favor of the shitty restaurant and hospitality jobs they used to have.
It's not really a great resignation. It's a bunch of people getting somewhat or slightly better jobs because those jobs a
Lucky to have lost my job at the beginning (Score:4, Interesting)
In June 2020, my company was so cash-strapped that it laid off people left and right. I could see my turn coming and started looking for a job, and got one just before my layoff meeting. The company was awful to its employees, so I was not in the least sad to say good-bye.
My new company was, as it happens, in the mortgage industry, which has been booming for the last couple of years. It couldn't have been a better move. It's a great company that treats its people well. We're all remote, with no expectation of going back to the office.
Everybody else is quitting now, I was lucky to get in on the early wave.
They're all influencers now I guess (Score:2)
Good luck with that.
Vaccine mandate? (Score:1)
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I agree that vaccine mandates should be reconsidered in light of Omicron being more virulent and less deadly, and the vaccines being less effective against Omicron.
That said, I think that anti-vax sentiment is foolhardy people looking to die on a hill (often literally when it came to Delta) just to say they stood up to tyranny, because they're too stupid to realize Facebook, iOS and Android are greater threats to them than a public health mandate against an airborne virus is.
I'm so sick of people whining ab
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I agree that vaccine mandates should be reconsidered in light of Omicron being more virulent and less deadly, and the vaccines being less effective against Omicron.
It would be interesting to me to hear how you feel any covid mRNA therapy mandates are ethical given that there are zero long term safety studies. Thoughts on that, or will you dismiss it with a boring dodge via appeal to authority like others have when I brought the issue up? (Sorry for my somewhat punchy tone, but you are defending firing people, i.e. destroying families' livelihoods, so I think you should have thick enough skin to be challenged.)
That said, I think that anti-vax sentiment is foolhardy people looking to die on a hill (often literally when it came to Delta) just to say they stood up to tyranny, because they're too stupid to realize Facebook, iOS and Android are greater threats to them than a public health mandate against an airborne virus is.
I'm so sick of people whining about a shot that was very effective against OG/Delta COVID, which is much safer than OG/Delta COVID, but because they don't "get" mRNA vaccines and Tucker Carlson told them it's bad, they risk their lives to be a part of an astroturf insurgency.
You don't get to make other people's health decisions for t
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You don't get to make other people's health decisions for them. They are entitled to informed consent.
Yes, we do, going all the way back to G. Washington.
Either protect your fellow citizens or get the fuck out of the country. Well established law
Quote Scalia "The Constitution is not a suicide pact"
Re: It's obscene not to mention vax mandates (Score:2)
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After all, how do you terrify children into "correct" behavior without an uber villain outside the bedroom?