As we start to pull out of the non-stop disruption that has been the COVID-19 virus, yet another facet to the ordeal we’ve all been through has turned political. It’s about how many people are perfectly fine collecting government checks instead of returning to work. I’m not going to get into either side of that debate, but I think from a human nature standpoint, it’s fascinating to see the great shifts in people’s attitudes to where, and how, they spend their professional lives. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the medical field.

One New York Times article from November 2020 said that 15-20 percent of people who work in health were considering leaving because of burnout following COVID. By April 2021, the Washington Post reported that number was up to 30 percent. I guess an international pandemic that gets so heavily politicized can do that to a person. 

So, let’s say that the number is 25% that are strongly considering leaving medicine. That’s one-in-four!! While I know that number really hits home to those of us who have worked within the healthcare industry, everybody can imagine walking into their doctor’s office or the emergency room and suddenly finding a quarter less people working. That’s not a small number.

It’s not a small number across other sectors either. In fact, healthcare is getting it easy compared to the hospitality industry. With hotel jobs traditionally not paying much more than minimum wage and restaurant/bar job workers relying mainly on tips, they can’t find employees. From an economic standpoint, it has become more attractive to many hospitality employees to either sit home and collect unemployment or to find a job elsewhere in the industry that pays better. In April 2021 alone, 740,000 hospitality workers officially left the industry. Overall, that’s a big portion of the 4 million people who left their jobs that month.

Yes, employees are really in the driver’s seat as I write this (late June 2021) when it comes to employment. Companies are needing to raise wages and benefits to convince workers to stay, lure them from other companies or get them to consider a job.

For me, one of the most fascinating aspects to this is that we’re starting to see the fallout of what happens when you force most of the industrialized world either a) out of their job or b) to do their job at home. After more than a year of staying at home, it turns out many people prefer that lifestyle. Some moved on to other business ventures they could run from their house while others have realized that the time they spend at home is more valuable than they money they made being out of the home.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to the country or world economically or politically as a result of this shift but I think it’s fascinating what it says about our attitudes and relationship with our professional lives. In the next few blogs, I’m going to dive deeper into not just the changes happening during the tail end of COVID, but how we’ve always been able to change things, we just never appreciated that fact. We didn’t need a once-in-100-years plague to wake us up… or maybe we did.

If you’ve been considering talking to a career development coach but feel like you may be seen as a black sheep or stick out like a sore thumb, I promise you that you’re losing valuable time. There’s a proper track and a place for you out there. The real question is if you want it enough to talk to somebody like me who knows how to help.

But before you talk to me, prove it to yourself. Check out ArnelDuvet.com and take the career satisfaction quiz. Don’t tell yourself you’re just having yet another bad day. Maybe it’s time to consider making a change. Take this quiz and we’ll calculate your score and let you know if you’re satisfied where you are or if it’s time to follow your destiny.