 2021 was the year of the great resignation. Around 40 million people quit their jobs with an average of 3.5 million quitting per month. On top of this, surveys show that in the United States, 85% of workers hate their jobs and 95% are considering switching to a new one. And if that wasn't enough, one of the fastest growing subreddits in 2021 was r slash anti-work, whose slogan is unemployment for all, not just the rich. And it doesn't look like it's slowing down in 2022. However, in this video, I'm going to go over the top five reasons why this is really happening and what you can do in order to benefit from the current situation. All right, so the first reason is probably the most important one. And that is people are not satisfied with their current jobs and working conditions. It used to be by getting a normal job, somebody could easily buy a house, retire, and support a family all by themselves. Now, my dad is a boomer. Love you, dad, if you're watching this, but he told me a story about how he was able to buy a nice car and a house doing entry level work when he was young in the 60s and the 70s. One of the stories he told me, and apparently this used to be a very common job, was helping people to pump their gas and washing their windshields. And apparently you'd get paid pretty decently. And then you'd also get tips on top of that. And he said that it paid so well that he was able to fund his entire lifestyle working part time. Now on top of how well jobs used to pay, they also used to give people a tremendous sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. And even if the job seemed relatively mundane, like pumping gas, for instance, at least you were helping people in your own unique way and contributing to society. Now, jobs used to also give people a sense of belonging, teamwork, and being part of something that's bigger than themselves, they would feel a connection to their boss and their colleagues and they would form lifelong friendships in the process. And it used to be commonplace that loyalty to a company was actually rewarded. Pensions were a big thing, of course, but on top of that you would also get rewarded for certain milestones. Like if you stayed with the company for a certain amount of time, they might give you a very fancy watch. I thank you for your service. But over time, as profits for companies rose, the CEOs and the executives of the company ended up getting huge raises. While the low and mid-level workers were left holding the bag. CEOs went from making 20 times as much as the average worker in the 60s to 350 times as much in 2020. Now, during this time, many tasks were automated and jobs were replaced. And a lot of pressure was put on workers to be productive, because if they weren't, they would be replaced. And instead of having a close relationship with their coworkers, many companies turned into a competitive environment. And slowly, the joy of working started to fade, and it was replaced by the dread of having to do something that you hate. And the relationship between companies and their employees that was once wholesome became a toxic game. Both companies and employees would try to extract the most amount of value out of each other as they can, while giving as little as possible. In order to maintain this facade of a competitive culture, companies became obsessed with looking as productive as possible, rather than being productive. Workers would brag to each other about how much work they got done or how long they worked. When in reality, the work wasn't all that meaningful or necessary. This gave rise to the concept of bullsh** jobs where workers resorted to automating as much of their work as possible. Other workers would hire people from overseas in order to do their work for them. And some would even get multiple bullsh** jobs and pretend like they were just doing one. Now, all of this was boiling up and gaining steam for the last 40 years. And then reason number two happened. And that is the rise of other options. Just after the news of the illness in 2020, many people were told to go home and do their work remotely. Because of this, many workers realized that they can do 90 plus percent of their job while they work from home. They didn't need to commute for hours a day and spend hundreds of extra dollars a month on gas. And they also didn't need to spend extra money on expensive lunches when they could just make their food from home. And they also didn't need to spend hours every morning getting ready and buying 10 different fancy outfits when they could just do their work from home in their pajamas. In fact, many realized that they didn't even need to get a job in the vicinity of where they lived. This opened up 10 or maybe even 100 times more options than what they had before the pandemic. And many realized they could do their work remotely while going on vacation in places like Puerto Rico. Now you might be thinking that working from home would get boring and a lot of people would hate it. And that's probably true for some. But actually, research has shown that on average people are 22 percent happier working from home than going to the office. And you might also think that people get less done when they work from home, but that's also untrue. Research showed that they were 47 percent more productive. So many workers were happier, more productive, and they also had way more options than they did before. But many workers were also laid off at the beginning of the pandemic. What about them? Well, first of all, the laid off workers benefited from stimulus checks and unemployment. And this gave them plenty of time to reevaluate their lives and their careers. So many of them decided to either switch careers entirely or start their own businesses. And 2020 was a record year for the largest amount of businesses started. Online businesses were especially popular since they can usually be started for less than 100 dollars. And after companies freaked out and let a bunch of their employees go, the economy quickly rebounded. And companies started frantically trying to hire people back. And for the first time in a long time, the balance of power shifted from the companies back to the employees. And this leads to reason number three. The workers now have tremendous leverage and they know it. So we've established that when the illness started, companies basically heartlessly laid off millions of employees. And we know that when the economy rebounded, they basically begged them to come back because they needed employees in order to scale their company. And we know this is what caused the shift of power from companies to employees. But like many things in history, this was all boiling up under the surface. This event was a long time coming and it was a matter of time before it happened with or without an event like the illness. This shift had been boiling up under the surface, almost like a volcano ready to erupt. And the illness was like a small earthquake that caused the volcano to erupt early. Now the most profitable companies in the world tend to be in the technology industry. And tech has basically started to disrupt every other industry in the world. Now the products of these companies put out are mostly information based software and it tends to be created by highly skilled workers. And this is basically created a system where in tech you are incentivized to hire the smartest, the best and the brightest in order to stay ahead of the competition. But how do companies attract the best and the brightest? Well for one, they offer them higher pay bonuses and benefits. And you can see this when you look at websites like levels.fyi where salaries at different tech companies are anonymously shared. And companies like Google are legendary for giving their employees ridiculously good benefits. Things like free lunch, onsite medical facilities, free massages, paid breaks in the middle of the day to do whatever you want and much more. But even more than money or benefits, talented employees want to work at a company that has a positive work environment. Talented employees don't want to work at a company with a toxic environment where everyone hates their job. Now this doesn't just mean treating the talented workers well, but it also means treating all workers in the company well no matter their rank or status. Because think about it, if you hate your job, when you interact with customers, they're going to pick up on that vibe. Same thing when you interact with other coworkers. And if a lot of people hate their job, it's going to create a toxic work environment. And if it creates a toxic work environment, highly skilled employees are not going to want to work at that company. So it's a reflexive cycle where the best companies in the world are realizing that it's super important to create a positive work culture in order to attract the best employees. Because if they want to have a positive work culture with the best employees and happy customers, that means that they need to treat all of their employees well, not just the really skilled ones. And as a side note, this is one of the main reasons why I've talked about this in many videos, working with successful technology companies, especially like S&P 500 companies that are doing really well, usually that's going to end up being a better experience for you than working for a company in an industry that's not doing well. But anyways, this trend was bubbling up under the surface until the illness hit. And then after that event, it was the same trend, but it wasn't just happening in the technology industry. It was starting to permeate to other industries as well. Many companies are starting to realize that they simply cannot get steady work from employees unless they treat them well. And people across the board are starting to realize that they can demand better pay, treatment, benefits and opportunities. And even those who are at pretty decent jobs where they were relatively happy started realizing that they can do even better than that. And why be loyal to a company when they're not loyal to you? Because when you think about it, you are not compensated or paid for your loyalty. Employees that stay in the same job for more than two years get paid 50% less than employees who switch jobs. So because of all these factors, businesses across the board are having to up their game in order to attract employees. And I have no doubt that at some point in the future, the meta is going to change again and businesses are going to gain the upper hand when it comes to leverage. But it's probably going to be more difficult for businesses to take back all these benefits and this increase in pay that they've had to give in order to retain people because people are going to become used to it and it's just going to become the new norm. And this brings me to the last two reasons why the great resignation is happening. And in my opinion, these two reasons are the least important, but they're the ones that you're hearing about the most. So number four is the illness itself, right? So companies originally laid off their employees when the illness struck and fear of the illness as well as uncertainty of the future caused people to not be comfortable going to their jobs as well. And on top of this, many of those that were essential and stayed working the whole time ended up working too much and getting burned out. So the stress from being overworked and then the illness itself caused many of them to quit as well. And then the same amount of work had to be done by fewer people. And so that caused the people that were left to be even more stressed and therefore more people quit. And then when companies tried to call people back to the office when they had been remote working, many of them decided to quit as well. Because once they realized that remote work was awesome and they really enjoyed it, they did not want to go back to their previous jobs. But the illness itself is not one of the biggest reasons this happened in my opinion. It's just the piece of straw that broke the camel's back. The event opened people's eyes to how bad work culture has gotten here in the U.S. and in many cases globally as well. Now the number five reason is people don't want to work. So I did mention the rapid rise of the subreddit r slash anti work. And if you read up on the website, there's definitely some political angles on there. And I definitely don't agree with these angles. I'm not like an anarchist or a communist. I'm not really that political at all. But realistically speaking, most people are just posting funny stuff like this or motivational stuff like this. And sometimes really useful information like this. Sure, there is a small subset of people who think they're entitled by birth to get everything for free. For instance, a friend of mine is a manager for a fortune 50 company and I happen to know he's a very good manager because he used to be mine. And the company he works for pays really well and gives them amazing benefits. And you can trust me on that because he never misses an opportunity to tell me about it when I hang out with them. And yet there are some employees that abuse the goodwill of the company constantly calling out sick, even though it's obviously aren't being late, having bad customer service and just generally speaking, doing the bare minimum. This is the kind of behavior that's very common and you see it at crappy companies with a toxic work culture. But some employees bring this mentality to good companies as well. Now I've always been someone who works really hard and I always try to give it my best shot no matter what. But I can definitely understand why people have this mentality with a crappy company. But in my opinion, it's not fair. And it's also not smart to bring this same mentality to a good company. And this sort of goes back to the golden rule, treat others as you would want to be treated. If the company is treating you really well, you should return the favor. And let's be realistic and honest here, no one is ever going to love every single moment at work. That has never happened. It never will happen. It's just completely unrealistic. And if you know about the hedonic treadmill, you realize that even if you have a great job, you're eventually going to get tired of the money and the benefits. And this is where deeper things like helping others, having a purpose and building a relationship with the people around you becomes much more important. And I think another major problem with this is how our education system doesn't really prepare people for work or even set proper expectations. So people come out of school having a totally unrealistic expectation for how the world works. But that's a topic for another video. But for most people, it's not that they don't want to work. It's just that they don't want to work under the current conditions where they hate their job and they're treated like sh**. And many are just disappointed because expectations that were set by the American dream and college marketing departments are nothing like reality. But now, thanks to the great resignation, things are changing. If you enjoyed this video, you will also love this video right here. Go ahead, gently tap that like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and comment down below any thoughts, comments, etc. that you have on the video. And I will see you next time.