Brace yourself for multiple 'Great Resignations' this decade

When COVID led to a near-worldwide lockdown in 2020, it caused the most dramatic rise in unemployment the U.S. had ever seen. Employees who were lucky enough to avoid being laid off during the first few months of the pandemic largely hunkered down and resolved to stay with their current employer until the dust settled, even if they would otherwise have been looking to change jobs.

This led to a phenomenon in 2021 and 2022 called the Great Resignation, a period where hiring began opening up again. All of those employees who'd been itching for an exit saw an opportunity to make their move.

We can liken this to a queuing system, where the pandemic led to the build-up of the queue, and as fear and risk subsided, new employment opportunities arose and the queue began to empty, similar to a dam opening its gates.

One of the interesting effects of this higher-than-normal employment migration in a relatively short period of time is tenure synchronization, where a large percentage of employees have been with the company for the same amount of time.

The Risks of Tenure Synchronization

In many industries, the length of employment tenure is predictable. Oh, sure, there will be variance, but even that is predictable, to some extent.

In the tech sector, for instance, job hopping every 3 to 4 years has become the norm. In many cases, a software engineer can see their income and stature rise much more rapidly by switching employers regularly than by staying with one company for a decade or more. Climbing the corporate ladder is out; the new normal is swinging on the corporate vines, Tarzan style, to ascend to the treetops.

What happens when a company with predictable average tenure experiences a mass influx of new hires? Suddenly, their tenure clocks start ticking together. Naturally, there will be some variation in when they decide to make their exits, but this synchrony does increase the chance of a mass exodus event once they've passed the year of average tenure.

Phase locking

There are other macroeconomic phenomena that are contributing toward sustained "phase locking" of the amplitude of employment migration.

Post-pandemic, we saw an era of high inflation, and that caused many companies to veer back into more cautious territory and question whether they'd over-resourced themselves during the hiring boom. This led to rounds of layoffs in 2022 and 2023, as they cut back their workforce to levels that could withstand continued economic pressures.

The job insecurity and lack of available opportunities that resulted from this correction led employees who otherwise might have started a new job search to hold off until conditions were more favorable. In early 2024, at the time of this writing, I expect there are still a number of workers who would have, in more normal times, jumped ship by now, but who feel more secure waiting another year or two before contemplating a move.

These conditions have also led to downward pressure on wages. Whereas job hopping in a "boom" cycle can lead to significant compensation increases, in the current environment a job change might not be possible without accepting a decrease in salary. Thus, many employees are waiting until the next hiring wave to make their move.

These factors are likely to induce even more phase locking than the tenure synchonization alone, which means that we could see a second or even third "Great Resignation" event occur during the current decade as employees' synchronized tenures lead to voluntary exits that coincide.

Implications of additional waves

For employers, the primary takeaway is that they should start thinking now about what effects another mass exodus (or mass influx) will have on the business. Companies that slowed or froze hiring after the Great Migration may have seen little immediate need for investing in onboarding materials or documentation intended for new hires. But when the next wave hits, their level of preparation will be critical to keeping the business humming along.

For employees, weathering multiple waves of hiring booms and busts may require opportunistic moves. For instance, you might not be entirely ready to leave your current role, but you might need to seize the moment while other offers are easy to get, rather than staying in the role until you've had your fill and then discovering that alternate employment opportunities are few and far between.