The Great Resignation is back with a bang. But that’s not all bad.
A record 4.5 million Americans quit their jobs in November, and most likely as many have since left, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
Among them Elena Hinderlich from Santa Fe.
“Everyone was so nervous they were mean. It just became too much,” Hinderlich, 52, said of a job selling medical oxygen that she quit on Jan. 6. “I was dealing with stress, even more stress. I have had very thankless patients.”
Though the impact of COVID-19 continues to roil the economy, there was surprisingly good news for workers, who resigned in droves in 2021 – an exodus dubbed “The Great Resignation” by Anthony Klotz, a professor at Texas A&M University . Some, like Hinderlich, have found better pay, more freedom and more opportunities than they might have imagined when the pandemic began.
“From the day I left healthcare, I felt like I was on vacation and very excited for the future,” said Hinderlich, who moved to Santa Fe in March after 22 years in Las Cruces. On Sunday she will start her training for her “dream job” as a flight attendant with Southwest Airlines.
Hinderlich isn’t nearly as young as many flight attendants, but she said a third of the prospects who underwent Southwest’s physical tests at Dallas Love Field Airport were older than 40.
“I feel like I’m in my prime,” she said. “Everything I have learned is useful and helpful. I belong to this tribe.”
A record number of “resignations,” amounting to 3 percent of the country’s workforce in November, comes hand in hand with stifling labor shortages, particularly at the bottom end of the pay scale, where increasing numbers of workers are fighting for or finding concessions they are considering better jobs in other industries.
“People from all industries are using what’s happening now to reevaluate where they are now,” said Michael O’Donnell, acting director of the Bureau of Business & Economic Research at the University of New Mexico. “It happens throughout the economy.”
Same goes for Santa Fe. Filip Perez switched from delivery driver to 3D printing. Cyndi Conn traded the managing director for an independent consultant. Russ Schindler transitioned from writing advertising copy for a shirt company to writing for an advertising firm focused on the oncology field.
All are part of a wave in the workforce poised to brave the uncertainty created by the pandemic to chart a new course.
Schindler’s past and current employers are in New York City, where he and his girlfriend lived until February, when they traded a tiny apartment on New York’s Upper East Side for a two-bedroom house in Santa Fe.
“I love being in Santa Fe,” Schindler said. “On the East Coast, you’re in a little bubble. You’re happy to be angry all the time. The first thing I noticed here was that everyone was waving at me and everyone was happier.”
Schindler, 27, has been working from home since the pandemic began, but in June the company he worked for called everyone back to the office.
“In September I decided to look for a job that would allow me to be completely remote,” he said. “I’ve realized that employees have a lot more power these days.”
In August 2020, he was in Santa Fe for the first time to visit his girlfriend’s parents, who had moved here three years ago. She stayed with her parents but he returned to New York and returned to New Mexico in November 2020.
“Hey, this is the right time to…move here,” Schindler said, recalling the aha moment.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics within the US Department of Labor reported new record numbers of job terminations in April, August, September and November, the most recent month available. The bureau reported the highest number of layoffs in New Mexico, at 25,000 in August.
In New Mexico, 2.7 percent of the workforce quit their jobs in October, down slightly from the national average of 2.8 percent, BLS statistics show. O’Donnell said it’s taking longer for the state to bring workers back into the economy, partly due to the number of people working in hospitality.
Nearly half of the gains in national layoffs — 370,000 to 4.5 million in November — were in “housing and boarding,” with healthcare and social sciences reporting 52,000 additional layoffs. Transport, warehousing and utilities added 33,000 more people who have left their jobs.
“The Great Recession [in 2008] was a top-down thing,” said O’Donnell. “This is bottom-up, bottom-end of the economy. Historically, these individuals have not had the market power to demand higher wages and better working conditions.”
Perez, 30, has hit the jackpot with an internship at the Higher Education Center’s Fab Lab Hub in Santa Fe, which earns him $40,000 a year. He left a $11.50-hour job as a food delivery driver for a senior center in Los Alamos, where he still resides.
“I didn’t want to be there anymore,” Perez said of his previous job. “I was here [at Fab Lab Hub] since November. I feel a bit more middle class than lower class. With my first salary I bought tires for my car. I feel like my mental state has really improved because I don’t have income anxiety.”
The Fab Lab Hub is an advanced manufacturing laboratory focused on training employees in 3D printing, founded and operated by Sarah Boisvert. A friend was an intern at the Fab Lab and encouraged Perez to attend a boot camp there, and Perez persuaded Boisvert to hire him as an apprentice.
“Sarah opened me up to the potential of other companies to work for,” said Perez. “This is a stepping stone to better opportunities.”
Conn, who is in her 40s, was CEO of Creative Santa Fe for 11 years before departing independently from the organization in October 2020 and entering a year-long hiatus the next month.
She relocated to Park City, Utah to help former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh create a utopian goal project to make the world a better place. But Hsieh died the next month and the project ended.
“I spent the winter skiing and camping and returned to Santa Fe in March,” said Conn.
As a consultant alone, she has been and still is the project manager for the Santa Fe Data Platform, which collects datasets on most things Santa Fe. She is now the producer of a documentary on post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma and the state of mental health with an all-female New Mexico crew, and she has curated an exhibit on climate change at the Weinberg/Newton Gallery in Chicago.
“Independent consulting is something I’ve always wanted to do but never had the courage to do,” said Conn. “These circumstances pushed me on a whole new path.”
She, too, has reached a happy point.
“At Creative Santa Fe, I learned what I wanted to do,” said Conn. “Now I can focus on the things that matter most to me and do it nationally and globally. I love projects with a start and end date and then I move on. I can independently choose what I want.”
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