Opinion | Will Covid Really Change the Way We Work?

The U.S. economy is in the throes of what’s been called the Great Resignation: Workers are quitting their jobs at or near the highest levels on record since tracking began in 2001. The attrition is particularly acute in the hospitality sectors, but it isn’t limited to low-wage industries. As of August, more than 10 million jobs sat open, causing businesses to reduce their hours and change how they operate. As my colleague David Leonhardt has said, what the economy is now experiencing is not a labor shortage so much as it is a shortage of workers who are willing to accept the terms employers are used to offering them. “It’s like the whole country is in some kind of union renegotiation,” Betsey Stevenson, a University of Michigan economist who was an adviser to President Barack Obama, told The Times. “I don’t know who’s going to win in this bargaining that’s going on right now, but right now it seems like workers have the upper hand.”