It's not a 'Great Resignation' that will change work forever, one economist says. His calculations show the labor shortage is ending soon.

October 30, 2021

It's not a 'Great Resignation' that will change work forever, one economist says. His calculations show the labor shortage is ending soon.

Now hiring sign Arlington Virginia — Pedestrians walk by a "Now Hiring" sign outside a store on August 16, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia.
Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images

Some say the labor market is in a "Great Resignation," but that term is wide of the mark, economist Daniel Alpert said.
Most unfilled are in low-paying sectors with mediocre wage growth, Alpert's Jobs Quality Index found.
Alpert also found that workers' cash piles will run out soon, and hiring will rebound in a matter of weeks.

The unusual phenomenon sweeping across the US isn't a "Great Resignation." It's not a labor shortage, either.

Working Americans are just taking their time looking for better jobs, Daniel Alpert, managing partner at Westwood Capital and a senior fellow of macroeconomics at Cornell Law School, told Insider. He also said that search won't last forever, and predicted that job creation will surge in a matter of weeks.

Alpert knows the difference between a good and bad job. He co-created the Job Quality Index, an economic indicator that tracks the ratio of attractive, high-paying jobs and low-wage, low-hour roles. In other words, he tracks good jobs and crappy jobs for a living. For the last three decades, the index has steadily crept lower.

The so-called Great Resignation captures a unique moment for the labor market. Americans are quitting at record pace, nearly 8 million Americans remain unemployed, and job openings sit near all-time highs. The situation was first deemed a "labor shortage" as businesses struggled to hire through the spring and summer. But as quitting boomed, experts started calling the shift the Great Resignation.

The phrase is "kind of lazy," Alpert told Insider, adding that "it really doesn't get at the heart of the matter." The $5 trillion that the government spent in pandemic-era stimulus gave many low-paid Americans a financial buffer through direct payments and boosted unemployment insurance.

"To the extent that you can put that reckoning off for a period of time, and you have the resources to do it, it makes sense that you will try to do it," he added. "They're thinking, 'Okay, I can afford to be choosy. I don't have to take the first job on offer. Let me see what's out there.'"

Once that buffer runs out, those people will return to the workforce and power a hiring frenzy, Alpert said.

Expect supercharged hiring into the new year

Many of the Americans who left their jobs have sizeable financial cushions from pandemic stimulus. Workers who left retail, leisure and hospitality, and social assistance jobs typically earned more from enhanced UI than their past salaries, according to Alpert.

States began ending the government's $300-per-week supplement to UI in May, and the enhancement lapsed nationwide on September 6, yet many recipients can still coast on the payments, Alpert said. Americans who left the retail sector have two weeks of surplus income from the benefits, on average. Social assistance workers have more than five weeks on average, and leisure and hospitality workers have nearly 11 weeks' worth of surplus income compared to their previous wage.

Once those cushions are spent up, hiring will boom, he said. It's likely "millions of people" will return to the workforce by the start of 2022, Alpert said.

The people who quit left the US's worst jobs

It makes sense so many jobless Americans are biding their time. Most of them left low-paying jobs, and so many of the jobs left aren't good ones, Alpert found.

Leisure and hospitality, administrative and temporary services, and local government sectors count for nearly 60% of the jobs that haven't been recovered. Many of those pay below the national average.

The same sectors saw some of the strongest wage growth through the pandemic, but on a dollar basis, still boast some of the country's lowest wages, Alpert noted.

To be sure, a ton of people are quitting, many for good. The pandemic accelerated retirement, particularly among those aged 59 and older. The labor force participation rate for workers at least 55 years old has climbed only slightly from pandemic lows, and Americans are more likely than ever to retire before they turn 62.

Economists who slammed the massive relief spending "want to see a disciplined labor force, and they're out there screaming about how they want people to be hungry," Alpert said. The Great Resignation is less of a permanent shift and more of a temporary speed bump.

"You want to make people whole during a crisis," Alpert added. "But when you do make them whole, you will have other consequences. You're going to give them options that they wouldn't have if they were starving."

Read the original article on Business Insider