“We all resign, sorry for the inconvenience”, the employees of a Burger King in Nebraska recently declared. “Please be patient with the staff who responded, no one wants to work anymore”, claimed on their side the employees of a McDonald’s in Texas. These two examples are only the illustration of a much broader movement born in the United States and known under the name of “Great resignation”. Even the singer Beyoncé refers to it in her latest title break my soul, got out at the end of June, chanting: “Get out of your job, get out of time”. This trend is not new across the Atlantic. It began in 2021, and refers to the fact that millions of employees left their posts, in proportions never reached before. In question: an awareness, accelerated with the confinements, of not finding their way in their work. If some take the plunge for financial reasons or related to the difficulty of their job, others feel a cruel lack of meaning in their work.
In France too, unprecedented calls for desertion are being heard, especially in the grandes écoles. “These jobs are destructive and to choose them is to harm, serving the interests of a few”, hammered eight students from AgroParisTech last May at their graduation ceremony. A unique phenomenon. “What’s interesting is that when you desert, you normally do it on the sly, and then we do it with a bang,” notes Tristan Dupas-Amory, sociologist and associate researcher at the Center d’Etudes et of Sociological Research (CERS). In France, does this phenomenon also exist?
Different proportions
“France is also experiencing a wave of resignations, but we are not at all in the same proportions as in the United States”, slice Frédéric Petitbon, partner in the firm PwC France. While 38 million people, representing no less than 25% of the American working population, resigned in 2021, this figure is less exorbitant in France, where it would concern around 1.6 million people, or 5.5% of the active population. However, it reflects an unprecedented increase in resignations in France. “In the third quarter of 2021 alone, 500,000 employees on permanent contracts left their jobs: this is 20% more than in 2019”, notes Frédéric Petitbon. No wonder, knowing that the year 2021 was among the only two, in twenty years, to experience an overrun of the bar of 500,000 resignations. In addition, one in six French employees plans to change employer, and therefore leave their job in the next twelve months, according to the recent study conducted by PwC.
And France is far from being an exception in Europe: the trend of resignations is also perceptible in Italy, Great Britain, and even in Spain, where the government is seriously considering extending the residence permits of foreign seasonal workers to compensate for the increasingly glaring lack of manpower in certain sectors, such as tourism. Globally, India and South Africa are setting records, with a third of their working populations saying they have never wanted to quit so much and are on the verge of doing so.
Big spin
Everywhere, the same factor seems to constitute the main motivation to resign: remuneration. With a specificity for France, where the quest for meaning seems much more important than among our neighbors. “If we take the Anglo-Saxon countries, money tops the list of motivations at 77%, compared to only 58% in France, where other factors such as accomplishment in one’s work and the feeling of being able to be there oneself -even arrive at 55% and 51%”, explains Frédéric Petitbon. Regarding hybrid work, the French are also slightly less expectant than most developed countries on the subject (80% are very attached to this possibility, compared to 90% in Spain and 93% in Germany). But they are more demanding than their neighbors vis-à-vis companies, from which they expect “better support to develop their skills, quality management, and an ecological commitment”.
More than a big resignation, the French seem more struck by a “big rotation”. Unlike in the United States, French workers leave the labor market little or not at all, but abandon certain professions to retrain in other sectors. And where most of the resignations across the Atlantic concern “blue-collar workers”, as Tristan Dupas-Amory explains, the phenomenon affects a wider range of people in France. “Withdrawal movements can be observed at both ends of the qualification scale”, thus analyzes Mireille Bruyère, sociologist of work and researcher at CERTOP (Center for Study and Research Work Organization Power) of the CNRS. On the one hand, senior executives and students from prestigious schools tend to leave jobs that lack meaning in their eyes, the main sector affected being that of technology (computing, cybersecurity, etc.). . On the other hand, workers are abandoning professions with harsh working conditions, particularly in the hotel and catering and health sectors.
Bottom movement
This phenomenon reflects a fundamental movement, emanating from job dissatisfaction, which has been amplified by the health crisis. In the health professions, there are indeed massive desertions: nurses and midwives are thus more and more numerous to take to their heels, and the vocations crisis threatens hospitals. “More than 10% of maternity wards are partially closed this summer for lack of arms and nearly two-thirds of maternity hospitals have disappeared in forty years“, testifies Muriel Cheradame, midwife in practice for 35 years and member of the board of directors of the UNSSF (National Union and Union of Midwives). “There is a real loss of meaning in this profession, amplified by the health crisis, which leads many midwives to resign from the hospital and to turn to the liberal”, she remarks.
Like health, the hotel and catering industry is also experiencing a wave of resignations and “recorded a peak of 250,000 unfilled positions in May”, confides the President of the UMIH (Union of Trades and Industries of the Hospitality) , Thierry Gregoire. “For me, this is not a shortage, but a sign that the relationship to work has changed with the health crisis. It is now up to companies to adapt to the labor supply, and not the other way around”. And in a sector where 90% of the staff is under 36, this phenomenon is particularly felt. “Resigners are three times more numerous among young generation Z than among seniors over 58,” says PwC partner Frédéric Petitbon on this subject.
Great retention?
However, despite these figures symptomatic of a creeping phenomenon of desertion from certain professions, sociologist Tristan Dupas-Amory remains convinced that “great retention” today prevails over “great resignation”. In other words, despite a wave of counter-current workers, the majority of young graduates continue to choose the same professions as their elders.
“The discourse around desertion seems to concern only a minority of young graduates”, analyzes the researcher at the CERS. “As regards students graduating from Grandes Ecoles, beyond a few extremely liberating speeches, the choices are in practice towards the most traditional sectors. A third of business school graduates will choose finance or consulting, and this phenomenon increases as you go up the rankings. At HEC, it’s 60%, or almost double,” he explains. And for the age group of 30-35 years, if they are more than 60% to express an intention of retraining, only 5 to 10% of them do so each year.