“Quiet quitting is not actually a thing. Or, at least, it is not a new thing,”” Derek Thompson writes. ⁠ ⁠ The hottest labor narrative right now is that everybody’s “quiet quitting.” This summer, popular videos on TikTok with millions of views have used the term to refer to the art of having a job without letting it take over your life. Every year, Gallup asks thousands of American workers about their commitment to their job. From 2010 to 2020, engagement slowly increased. In 2022, it declined so slightly that it’s still higher than it was any year from 2000 to 2014. “Labor productivity is falling after it surged in the first year of the pandemic. The best explanation for this decline, however, is not a sudden outbreak of TikTok-transmitted laziness. It is that record-high rates of job switching in the service sector have created an inexperience bubble such that many new workers at restaurants, hotels, and so forth aren’t fully trained,” Thompson writes. ⁠ ⁠ “Still, the term has taken off in part because burned-out or bored workers are simply desperate for a fresh vocabulary to describe their feelings ... Quiet quitting sounds to some like worker empowerment ... [But to managers, it] offers a convenient explanation for ostensibly lazy workers.” ⁠ ⁠ “Complex questions such as ‘Am I running my team effectively?’ and ‘Is hybrid work actually working out for us?’ can be reduced to the confident diagnosis that young people just don’t want to work,” Thompson continues at the link in our bio. “Quiet quitting is a bit of novel nonsense that might stand in for chronic labor issues such as the underrepresentation of unions or a profound American pressure to be careerist.” ⁠