The trend has employers concerned, but proponents say this is nothing new.
The pandemic has changed the way we view lots of things (including sitting on public transit with the lower half of your face exposed), and the job market is yet another aspect of our lives that may be permanently different from the pre-Covid days. The ping-pong-table-in-the-office culture has been replaced by hybrid or permanent work-from-home policies, and living in the city where your company is based is a requirement for fewer job postings.
But even though some employers may have new perks, the labor market is far from recovered from the pandemic-era reductions. Big companies, including HBO Max, Shopify, Walmart, and Ford have recently announced layoffs. At the same time, a PwC survey found that 50% of companies anticipated layoffs, while 52% predicted that they would freeze hiring and 44% thought they would rescind job offers. And if layoffs alone weren’t crushing enough, just last week, Meta laid off workers by letting an algorithm randomly select which contractors to terminate — something Tesla, Amazon, and Apple have done as well.
With the volatile state of the job market, it’s understandable that younger generations are feeling a bit disillusioned with 9-to-5s. But despite their reputation for laziness and entitlement, studies show millennials and Gen Z are working hard, just maybe not in the traditional ways — a 2021 Bank of America survey found that 56% of millenials and 62% of Gen Z had a side hustle. For younger generations, their day job is not the be-all and end-all, and the newest workplace trend, which has been dubbed “quiet quitting,” is demonstrating how differently Gen Z and millennials view full-time employment compared to previous generations.
What is quiet quitting?
It sounds bad, like just up and disappearing from a job without so much as a two-week notice, right? Well, while the millennial generation did popularize ghosting in dating, quiet quitting is a lot less brutal.
According to TikTok user Zaid Khan, quiet quitting means “quitting the idea of going above and beyond” at work.
Traditional career advice tells young people to say yes to every task requested of them and to never leave before their boss, but that was before the WHO recognized burnout in its International Classification of Diseases in 2019. Taking on more than one can handle and having poor work-life balance are common causes of burnout, and burnout can impact physical health (from fatigue to increased likelihood for heart disease) and mental health (depression, anxiety).
Is quiet quitting bad?
It depends who you ask. 25-year-old Natalie of the highly popular Corporate Natalie TikTok account, which has over 424,000 followers, sees the value in scaling back. “When I graduated college, I thought that I had to work as hard as I possibly could,” she told me. “My job was my entire life, and I thought that having your job as your main personality trait was exciting and cool.” But her dedication had a downside: “My hair was almost falling out, because I was working so hard.”
Natalie was going above and beyond to try to get an early promotion, something unheard of in her industry. It didn’t happen. Contrary to popular wisdom, grinding and hustling didn’t get her what she wanted, and she became disillusioned with it all.
When her company went remote, she realized she could scale back to working 40 (versus 80) hour weeks and focus her extra time on creating content for and growing her TikTok. “Nobody noticed,” she said.
Not everybody quiet quits so they can dedicate more time to a side hustle, though. Dr. Tega Edwin, career coach and founder of Her Career Doctor, explained that the impulse could come from “people realizing that they have been going overly above and beyond without the pay to match, without the rewards to match. And they’re realizing that it doesn’t make a difference,” she said. They can still do their jobs well without doing the extra busywork, or taking on additional responsibilities — giving 70% instead of 150% and still doing their jobs well.
Quiet quitters say it’s not about laziness or not wanting to work, but rather, no longer tolerating being taken advantage of — which is a big issue for women, particularly women of color, who are chronically undervalued and underpaid for their work. “Especially the Black and Brown women I work with, so many have quit their jobs. And then they found out that after they quit, the company hired three people to fill in their one role — the role they were doing without a title change [and] without a pay increase,” Dr. Edwin said.
Both Natalie and Dr. Edwin believe the pandemic contributed to this mindset shift. For Natalie, working from home made her realize that her bosses weren’t surveilling her every move (though some employers do this) and just cared that she got her work done. Dr. Edwin believes the change was a bit more philosophical: “People looked up and realized, life is too short for me to spend most of my time in a job or in a place that doesn’t value me, or I don’t feel seen or valued.” Quiet quitting, she said, is like the Great Resignation Lite.
There’s a generational component, as well: Millennials and Gen Z are prioritizing a greater work-life balance than previous generations. At the same time, they’re worried about finances — 46% of Gen Z and 47% of millennials live paycheck to paycheck, and 43% of Gen Z and 33% of millennials have taken on a part-time or full-time job in addition to their primary job. That could explain the reasoning behind younger generations’ unwillingness to take on what they see as unpaid labor. That, combined with looming layoffs, could also explain the hesitance with putting all one’s eggs in the same basket.
Who should quietly quit?
Quiet quitting isn’t for everyone, and Dr. Edwin notes that it’s important to distinguish whether you’re feeling tired in your role or are completely disengaged. “When you’re genuinely exhausted, you don’t have the energy to keep doing the most,” she said. If you’re completely uninterested in your work, it’s worth examining if it’s time to explore other opportunities.
Natalie also doesn’t think people fresh out of college or just starting out in their careers are in a place to skate by. “But once you’re confident in what you’re providing, I think it’s okay to take a step back and know what meeting expectations is, know what exceeding expectations is, and make sure you’re not going below meeting expectations.” She added that people who are inclined to abuse certain flexibilities, like work from home, need to step it up — not quiet quit.
What do employers have to say about quiet quitting?
To employers, “quiet quitting” might as well be synonymous with “self-sabotage.” Johnny C. Taylor Jr., President and CEO of Society for Human Resource Management, told TIME, “Anyone who tells their business leader they are a quiet quitter is likely not to have a job for very long.” It does sound bad to announce to your employer that you’re putting in less effort — if you decide to do it, it’s probably best to not say the quiet part out loud.
Arianna Huffington wrote in a post on LinkedIn that quiet quitting is “a step toward quitting on life,” adding, “Work can give us meaning and purpose. It’s part of a thriving life,” and that we can reject burnout without rejecting the idea of deriving joy from our jobs.
Work can be fulfilling, but phenomena such as this and The Great Resignation show that it wasn’t for many people. Instead of trying to shame burnt-out employees, businesses can listen and learn.
“If this is a movement that lasts for long, if we see more and more people quiet quitting, the impact is that employers will realize that they’ve been taking advantage of their employees,” Dr. Edwin said. “They’ll start to see how one person has been doing five people’s jobs, how one person has been doing three people’s jobs, and then they would have to reckon with either, ‘Are we going to now hire more quality people? Or are we going to start getting people promotions and giving the pay to go with the promotions?’”
Avoiding burnout, after all, isn’t just good for employees — it also benefits business’ bottom line. “Studies have shown consistently disengaged workers means a decrease in revenue, [and] it means an increase in expenses [and] healthcare costs,” said Dr. Edwin. A Gallup report found that disengaged workers result in $7.8 trillion worth of productivity loss globally.
And even though it’s trending, the concept is nothing new. It can also just be called setting boundaries, which, according to Dr. Edwin, “has been happening; TikTok just put a fun little term on it.”
