Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies, on whether the huge rise in vacancies in the UK offers an incentive to look for another job
With the pandemic, workers have been saying “I quit!” in their droves. In the US, employees packed in their jobs at such pace that a new term was coined – the Great Resignation – and alongside it, countless newspaper articles appeared about career-switching. But in the UK, are as many people quitting as we think? And would the greatest new year’s resolution be to join in? I asked Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies.
Is the Great British Resignation under way?
We’ve seen more people resign from their jobs than at any point before: it was roughly 400,000 in the three months from July to September 2021, up from 270,000 in the same period in 2019 – the last non-pandemic year. The UK has a dynamic labour market, with a high turnover, particularly in low-paying work. And when large parts of the economy reopened, more jobs were created.
