Working from home, the "great resignation," and now, quiet quitting. Each has become a pandemic buzzword.

As workers finally return to the office this week, and economists and stock market investors agonize about a recession, serious questions about the American work ethic are being raised.

A Gallup poll released Tuesday finds that 50% of workers are quiet quitters, and another 18% are actively disengaged. Only 32% are committed to their jobs. Gallup defines quiet quitting as workers not going above and beyond at work, i.e. just doing the bare minimum to keep their heads afloat.

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“These workers are quick to quit at the first challenge they encounter — unwilling to put in the effort to learn and improve.”
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Is quiet quitting a phenomenon happening just now — or has the American work ethic been eroding over the past 2-1/2 years of the pandemic to the point where the majority of the labor force is miserable?

Checking out to lunch, as it’s traditionally been known, is more figurative than literal and really has nothing to do with actually leaving a job. Rather, it means employees mentally withdrawing from their work — eschewing late-night and weekend emails, and rejecting extra projects.

Today's disengaged workers aslso seek to widen their work/life boundaries, Healthline reports, and Gallup says this disconnect began in the second half of 2021.

Andy Puzder, writing in The Federalist, delves further into the malaise and unproductivity of the U.S. labor force, maintaining, “not enough Americans are willing to work.” He says that because millions of Americans have dropped out of the work force, the true unemployment number isn’t really 3.5%, but 5.5%.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed bolsters this point (“The Americans Who Never Went Back to Work After the Pandemic”). Since Labor Day 2021, there have been an average of 11 million nonfarm positions available each month — unfilled. For every unemployed person in the U.S., there are nearly two open jobs.

As Nicholas Eberstadt, author of the opinion piece and board member of the American Enterprise Institute, puts it, “Never has work been so readily available in modern America. Never have so many been uninterested in taking it.”

In agreement, Puzder goes on to write about COVID relief measures.: “This is not a question of people genuinely in need of government assistance. We are a rich nation. We should, and we do, help those in need. But the able-bodied should work both for society’s sake and for their personal benefit, their dignity and sense of self-worth.”

They also owe it to the U.S. economy to be productive, Puzder says.

Productivity Decline Biggest in 70 Years

The growing quiet quitting movement, and the number of employees subsequently contemplating scaling back in their work ethic, has executives worried. Productivity in the second quarter dropped 2.5% year over year, the largest annual decline in over 70 years, The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

Additionally, the percentage of engaged workers declined for the first time in years in 2021, according to the Gallup survey, based on a survey of 15,091 adults, conducted in June. Most of the workers who are disengaged, or quietly quitting, are looking for another job, Gallup says.

The problem of workers being chronically out to lunch transcends financial considerations, and is especially pervasive among Millennials and Gen Z, Puzder writes: “These workers are quick to quit at the first challenge they encounter—unwilling to put in the effort to learn and improve.

"They regularly turn down shifts and even opportunities for overtime pay. If you think I’m being unnecessarily critical, go talk to a local employer.”

These fears were crystallized in an academic paper released at the Federal Reserve’s meeting late last month in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. COVID-19's flexible work hours and working from home have, according to the research, lowered the number of hours worked each week, thereby depressing U.S. productivity.

Some defend this trend, including career coach Matt Spielman, who tells The New York Times that for burnt-out employees, “dialing the knob back from 10 to 7 or 6 or 5 makes sense.”

Billionaire entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary, perhaps best-known as a co-host of ABC’s long-running show “Shark Tank,” however, is among those who, like Puzder and Eberstadt, derides a weakening of the American work ethic. “This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in launching a career. If you’re a quiet quitter, you’re un-American,” O’Leary tells CNBC. “It’s against what we do in business.”

In an interview with Newsmax Finance, Harley Lippman, founder and CEO of technology services firm Genesis10, says, “Beyond medical problems, the downside of COVID-19 is that we lost a bit of the work ethic. Hard work is a value that we are moving away from in this country, and it is unhealthy. Like most things in life, you can only succeed through hard work.”

Opportune Time for a Career Move

For those who are driven, who have a strong work ethic, now is the most rewarding time in years to switch to a new job. They are gaining, on average, a 8.5% increase in pay, compared to 5.9% for those who have been in the same job for the past year, WSJ reports.

Some are seeing pay raises of as much as one-third of their previous salary. Payroll provider ADP found that recent job switchers are earning 16.1% more.

There is one glaring risk for those who jump ship, however: recession. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has warned of pain to be felt among many U.S. households, including job losses.

Ambitious workers, whether they stay put or brave a new opportunity, can take comfort in the knowledge that many of their colleagues are merely putting up with, or comfortable with, the status quo.

For the minority of workers committed to the tradition of hard work, simply being a dynamo is now a distinguishable quality.