Workers Leaving Retail Jobs in Record Numbers

A twist on the “we can’t hire anyone” headlines: Some retail workers are not moving out of the job market, but up and out of service sector jobs.

The Washington Post:

Retail workers, drained from the pandemic and empowered by a strengthening job market, are leaving jobs like never before.

Americans are ditching their jobs by the millions, and retail is leading the way with the largest increase in resignations of any sector. Some 649,000 retail workers put in their notice in April, the industry’s largest one-month exodus since the Labor Department began tracking such data more than 20 years ago.

Some are finding less stressful positions at insurance agencies, marijuana dispensaries, banks and local governments, where their customer service skills are rewarded with higher wages and better benefits. Others are going back to school to learn new trades, or waiting until they are able to secure reliable child care.

“It was a really dismal time, and it made me realize this isn’t worth it,” said 23-year-old Aislinn Potts of Murfreesboro, Tenn., who left her $11-an-hour job as an aquatic specialist at a national pet chain in April to focus on writing and art. “My life isn’t worth a dead-end job.”

In interviews with more than a dozen retail workers who recently left their jobs, nearly all said the pandemic introduced new strains to already challenging work: longer hours, understaffed stores, unruly customers and even pay cuts.

Why some Americans are still hesitant to get back to work
With stimulus payments and additional unemployment, some workers are reassessing when and how they’ll get back to work as the economy emerges from crisis. (Mahlia Posey/The Washington Post)
Christina Noles spent much of the pandemic working the closing shift at a dollar store — sometimes nine consecutive days without a break — for $10.25 an hour. She felt isolated, anxious and demoralized.

Last month, the 34-year-old from Concord, N.C., quit, leaving the industry she’s worked in for most of her adult life. Now she works from home for a local law firm — a job that, three days in, still seems too good to be true.

“There’s a part of me that feels like this must all be a dream,” Noles said. “There were a lot of things I liked about retail: I love talking to people and helping them, but the pandemic made me realize it was untenable.”

It’s not a ‘labor shortage.’ It’s a great reassessment of work in America.

Labor professors and economists say the pandemic also made it harder for the nation’s 15 million retail workers to find reliable child care and public transportation. But now that life is returning to normal, analysts say, workers have begun to realize they have options, capitalizing on the latest waves of hiring and government stimulus as catalyst for career change. Companies of all sizes, meanwhile, are offering a host of perks, from free appetizers to subsidized college courses, to attract and keep workers.

“We’re seeing a wider understanding that these were never good jobs and they were never livable jobs,” said Rebecca Givan, a professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University. “In many cases, the pay is below a living wage and the hours are inconsistent and insufficient. If anything, the pandemic has made retail jobs even less sustainable than they already were.”

It is too soon to tell, she said, whether the latest exodus reflects a long-term shift away from retail work. Some employees, for example, may return to the industry once child care is more readily available and other pandemic-related challenges ease, but others are turning to industries where workers are in high demand.

Retail on a good day is a hard job. Public-facing hourly jobs range from challenging when things go smoothly to an utter nightmare during things like a pandemic. There is also an undercurrent here of folks that worked in retail and other service sector jobs just spent the last 18 months with their jobs alternating between “non-essential” and “come to work regardless of your health/childcare/safety concerns or you’re fired” while watching the next level up of careers get considerations like remote work not available to them. No wonder folks that can make the move, are doing so.

Like a lot of economic issues right now, how much of this is a trend and how much is a post-Covid adjustment remains to be seen. But such historic numbers does put some added nuance to the “nobody wants to work” narrative that’s been floating around. When there are more jobs than folks for them, the job seekers that can be more picky, are.