There's something called an "echo boom" occurring with quitting employees, says Glassdoor Chief Economist Aaron Terrazas – and after a year, employers should anticipate that employees will get restless again.
The labor market, Terrazas clarifies, is entering into a cycle of repeat quitting. What many call the Great Resignation shows no signs of slowing down any time soon, as quit rates have been at a record high for the past year. However, rather than employees continuing to quit old jobs and move to new ones, Terrazas hypothesizes that employees who already quit once are quitting new positions where the grass is not greener on the other side. From a psychological perspective, employees who have already quit a job once have overcome the potentially daunting mental hurdle of quitting and the uncertainty of unemployment. This means that quitting will be easier in the future for them, and they could end up in the "echo boom,” trying to find a job that feels like the right fit.
The other reason quit rates are so high today could be that workers are experiencing a ”boomerang effect,” says Anthony Klotz, the professor who coined the term “Great Resignation.” In situations like these, workers ask for raises or perks at their old jobs that they’re told aren’t possible, they bounce to another job for a few months, let their employers see how much they were needed, and return to find that suddenly their desired raises and perks are actually possible.
Experts from Business Insider add that in addition to high quit rates and boomeranging employees, employers are also worried about the phenomenon of quiet quitting, where employees "simply do their jobs as written." As employees boomerang back to their original companies, they could expect better work conditions in which they aren't overworking themselves, which many employers dread.
