 All right, Debbie. Hi, Ron. So I'm wondering, wondering if you've heard of something that's referred to as the great attrition. Have you heard that phrase? The great attrition? Yeah. Not what I'm on my phone anyway. So yeah, it's this phenomena and the reason I'm hearing about it is because my company's hurting from it and a lot of companies are hurting from it right now. And basically it's this thing that's been going on starting this year where a lot of people like not dining, they're quitting. Yeah, they're quitting and it's not just people who are like kind of wage hourly workers and they're getting paid more to stay home so they stay home. It's like white collar workers, engineers, even VPs and just all different kinds of job levels, professionals, and they're not necessarily leaving a workforce but they are leaving their current jobs and maybe going to some other company or like I guess in some cases maybe they're leaving and it's a strange phenomenon but it's attrition levels are way up at my company all companies I know of anyway. So but and it's hard to pinpoint what's causing this. There's different articles out there in the world that speculate about reasons like that run the gamut of people feel that they're disconnected from their organizations or that they're not valued. They're just simply reflecting on their life because it's been such a change working remotely and they're just re-evaluating what they want to even do with their lives and I mean if people are really reflecting on what do I want out of life and those kinds of things like that's probably a good thing if they're thinking seriously about that and re-evaluating what direction they want to go it's painful for employers. Let me tell you that and it's like crushingly difficult to hire we're trying to hire like as much as fast as many people as we can and and like in the job market at least in Silicon Valley it is like whoa if you need a job come out here but uh yeah so what do you think about this phenomenon? So it's definitely going on it's the highest rate of resignations of people leaving jobs ever recorded in the United States we're currently experienced people more people are quitting leaving their jobs and ever at the same time unemployment rates are pretty low 4.8 percent is is historically very low it's not as low as before covid but it's very very low and also add to that there are more job openings right now I think 10 million is the number of something like that more job openings than ever in American history that is more jobs are going unfilled than ever so this is again I think a consequence of covid in multiple directions first the distortions of a covid economy and of the government intervention are hard to keep track of but it's not true that all the distortions have to happen or do happen in the markets for goods they also happen in the markets for labor labor gets misallocated if you will during times like when the government does central planning the government starts you know intervening like it did on a scale unprecedented during covid some companies get bailed out that shouldn't exist other companies you know small businesses are allowed to go under but then some of them get bailed out and banks do well during this whole period the whole thing is it just it creates it distorts all the price signals all the price signals become meaningless because they're all influenced by the central planners there's no pure real price signals anymore and so some of that is this is kind of a people feel like I can earn more money somewhere else because of all these job openings wages are generally going up but the employers maybe are not fast enough to adjust wages to their existing employees so employees are leaving and going somewhere else that does appreciate that wages seems to be going up it's not a bad time to leave a job wait a little bit test the market check out different employers since wages are probably going to be higher in two weeks than they are right now even if I spend the next two weeks or a month looking for a job big deal I'll get compensated for that when I get my higher wage you know amazon can't find enough employee in enough programmers so starting salaries at amazon are going through the roof right now and yet established engineers their their wages are not adjusting in proportion because that's not how managers think so they might feel like wait a minute starting person in amazon is making 150 I have 10 years experience I'm making to something that doesn't make any sense I should be making three four five hundred I should leave and go test the market so there's a lot of that going on again I will point to immigration laws big part of the issue here that they're not immigrants not only come in and they they fill out fill out some of those 10 million open jobs you know they compete with American workers and and and they also start companies but you know the consequence of all that is that they are massive distortions right now not only are they ships out in the ports waiting but they're also employees doing things that they haven't done before now part of that also could be people reevaluating their work life balance they've spent a lot of time at work at home they've spent a lot of time with their family maybe they like that maybe they want to work part-time maybe they want a different job with different stress level COVID is certainly was a time of reflection so it's hard to tell what's going on but I can tell you that when when things like this happen it's usually because there's some distortion in the force right and in the economic force created by government policies by by monetary policy but fiscal policy that is creating this misallocation that's going on it could be the people are introspecting and thinking and that could be a good thing maybe not hard to tell dependent how rational they are about it but I think it's more likely to be a monetary government you know distortion of allocation of resources phenomena and a shortage of workers that is creating these weird incentives for people but we'll see it's going to be interesting to read the studies that come out after this and to see what looking back what caused all this yeah I mean I could say anecdotally someone in my company a younger person earlier on in her career reached out to me just to kind of like ask me questions about my career path and she even she said almost like it was like she read it from an article but I don't think she did but she said I've been just reflecting lately about what I want to do with my life and I've been laser focused on my career but I'm reevaluating where I want to go and what I want to do now and it was like exactly that type of thing I mean of course that's just anecdotal not statistical but but I think there's another component which is it's not quite just so simple as an economic dislocation but it's it's like a ripple effect from this this thing that the government forced us all to stay in our homes for the year and a half and of course that's going to have all kinds of unpredicted unintended impact and then what are the economic ripple effects of that going to be so it's just it's wild I know that young people in the workforce right now are demanding flexibility in terms of remote work they so a lot of the banks in in New York would like the workers to all come back to the office and workers are saying no we'll come back three few days and we want to work two days there's a big move in apple among young employees to demand more time at home I think apple standing behind their decision to have everybody come back to the office but a lot of firms in New York that I know of are not and they're allowing people and there's big battles within the firm should be 20 percent of the time 30 percent of the design 40 percent of the time you're allowed to work from home and then a lot of young people are going to say tell with us you know in a job market where I can shift jobs I'm going to go to the employer that's going to offer me the best the best incentives and particularly when there's no again there's no immigration there's no real competition you know what this will be you know wages will go up that's great particularly for the people looking forward to to negotiate but over time what will happen is if the wages are not being driven primarily by increases in productivity we all suffer from a low standard of living in a lower quality of life it might appear that we wanted to be home but long-term will be paid less even if in the short run we're being paid more because we're we're less productive from home it turns out I don't know it it'll be interesting to see how it plays up I don't know if we're less productive at home I mean I think it depends on the job depends on who you are and it depends on the job but I can tell you that a lot of young people who don't have the discipline are going to find that they are less productive working from home yeah yeah yeah I agree with that but like I mean there's definitely especially out here in Silicon Valley where people are spending three or four hours a day commuting I mean there's three or four hours a day that you're not wasting so it varies it varies and I think for I actually think that for older more seasoned professionals working from home is more productive and I think for young people who still need to learn and learn from the elders in many cases yeah from home is less productive I think it's the young people who are demanding to stay at home who have the most to gain by going to the office I agree with that yeah yeah for sure it's it's gonna be fascinating but you see I would have a lot more viewers if I said this is an absolutely unmitigated disaster this is all caused by filling the blank by platinum because platinum is going to go through the roof because of these employment patterns and you know life in general is going to suck for the next 20 years but I have I have this great cure for all of that I don't know I mean it just it feels like I keep saying I don't know and that's not what you're supposed to do if you want a lot of subscribers maybe not but I appreciate it you know I mean there's a lot of just really I mean there's just a lot of weird stuff going on right now it's not hard to say where we're bleeding and some of it will be good some of it will be bad I agree but I think there's no politically economically this very little good is going to come of this unfortunately I mean yes some of us will have a better life work balance some of us will be able to work more at home that'll be a good outcome but generally the consequence of COVID and the consequence of the last couple of administrations are going to be a lower standard of living and and lower economic growth I think that's I think there's no doubt about that at least not in my mind. 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