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Marissa Peterson quit her job as a bartender in Durham, North Carolina, in June, after she was sexually assaulted by a customer and felt management didn\u2019t do enough to keep her assailant from returning to the establishment.<\/p>\n
Her decision, Peterson said, was informed by time she spent at home during the pandemic, after being laid off from another job. Extended pandemic unemployment insurance gave her, for the first time in her adult life, space from work and time to consider her relationship with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was able to truly start thinking about how I had been mistreated by several employers, and just the things that I tolerated, and, unfortunately, how I allowed them to mistreat me by not saying anything or by not leaving sooner,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
When the incident happened at her new job, the decision was clear, even though it meant missing out on much-needed paychecks. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I ended up quitting, it was because I felt as though my own self-respect was worth more than money,\u201d Peterson explained.<\/p>\n
Even as the worst of the pandemic has waned and many things have returned to normal, many are refusing to let work return to how it was before. Workers like Peterson are expressing that sentiment by their willingness to quit their jobs. Currently, the quit rate in the US is at 2.6 percent, down from its peak of 3 percent <\/strong>last winter but still above historic norms. In other words, the Great Resignation is still going. Others are trying to improve the jobs they\u2019re in through collective action like unionizing and striking. Those who were able to work from home during the pandemic and felt it made their jobs and lives better are refusing to come back to the office. <\/p>\n These decisions have been made possible, in part, by a tight hiring market where employers have struggled to find enough workers. But the fact this scenario has lasted so long \u2014 as extended unemployment insurance ran out, as layoffs crowd the headlines \u2014 suggests there\u2019s more at play. There seems to have been a fundamental shift in how many Americans consider work\u2019s role in their lives, moving the needle ever so slightly from \u201clive to work\u201d to \u201cwork to live.\u201d <\/p>\n This change came about for many reasons. The pandemic shed more light on and caused more appreciation for the plight of front-line workers, whose jobs were exceedingly difficult and underpaid even before they became more overtly dangerous. For knowledge workers, who can do most tasks with just a computer and an internet connection, it showed that commuting to a physical location wasn\u2019t necessary to do their jobs or for their companies to thrive. Perhaps most poignantly, the millions of deaths that the pandemic wrought showcased the fleetingness of life and made people a little more cautious about how they spend their short time on Earth. <\/p>\n Importantly for many Americans \u2014 including Petersen, who currently works three jobs \u2014quitting is not simply a decision of having an income or not. Many Americans have learned how to survive on a spouse\u2019s income, dwindling savings, or simply less. That means the decision to quit a job is a little less arduous than it used to be. <\/p>\n In some ways, the current moment is also a reaction to what came before, when overwork became not only commonplace but also glorified, according to Simone Stolzoff, author of the upcoming book The Good Enough Job<\/em>. <\/em>The 2000s and 2010s were plagued by celebrity tech CEOs, hustle culture, and the misplaced promise of the #girlboss.<\/p>\n \u201cNow we\u2019re seeing the pushback,\u201d Stolzoff said. \u201cEmployees have been able to see an alternative both with their eyes on social media and taste it in their lived experience of their own work.\u201d<\/p>\n