Why People Are Quitting

May 20, 2022

Explaining today’s jobs shuffle

The Roosevelt Rundown features our top stories of the week.



What Record Quit Rates Really Mean

Record numbers of people are quitting their jobs—as 47 million did in 2021.

And that’s a good thing.

“Coming off years of inequality and wage stagnation, what high quit rates really represent is a necessary reshuffling of jobs leading marginalized workers to pursue better working conditions and wages,” Roosevelt’s Ira Regmi explains.

Examining pre–2000s data usually excluded from analysis of quits, Regmi finds that quit waves are common historically.

“The higher quit rates in 2021 compared to the early 2000s can be attributed to a relatively robust recovery that, unlike the recovery of 2009, has not been a jobless one.”

Learn more in “What Record Quit Rates Really Mean.”

 

Everything Is Climate Now

On February 24—the day Russia invaded Ukraine—the White House published more than 1,300 pages of reports on global supply chains.

They didn’t get much press attention then. But as Roosevelt’s Todd Tucker argues in a new issue brief, they make three major contributions:

Read more in “Everything is Climate Now: New Directions for Industrial Policy from Biden’s Supply Chain Reports,” and Tucker’s piece in the Washington Post. 

And stay tuned for more in the “All Economic Policy Is Climate Policy” series over the next few weeks.

 

What We’re Reading

The Double Terror of Being Black in AmericaThe Atlantic

The Government Gave Out Bad Loans. Students Deserve a Bailout.New York Times

5 Ways Abortion Bans Could Hurt Women in the Workforce – Vox

3 Policies in Biden’s 2023 Budget Proposal That Will Restrict Corporate Power and Benefit Workers [feat. Roosevelt’s Niko Lusiani] – Business Insider

Cardi B, David Letterman in Hyde Park: Why Netflix Interview Show Visited FDR Library Poughkeepsie Journal