Quiet quitting is something you’re hearing about in the news (and we’re guilty, too) — but it hasn’t come up in some of the highest levels of government.
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U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said in an interview with Yahoo Finance that while he talks to a host of companies around the nation, none of them have brought up “quiet quitting.”
“As I’ve gone around the country this last month– and I’ve done a lot of trips– no company has approached me on this quiet quitting idea,” Walsh said.
The secretary noted he saw “quiet quitting” plenty in the media. “Certainly, that’s a concern if it continues on because when people hire people, they expect them to do a day’s work for a day’s pay,” he added.
Quiet quitting is the idea of not doing more than your job requires to avoid burnout. It has also inspired a host of think pieces debating the relationship between life and work, post-pandemic, especially for white-collar workers.
A new survey found that a majority (57%) of a sample of full-time U.S employees noticed a coworker has quiet quit. Sixty-two percent said they are “annoyed” by the “quiet quitting trend.”
It also inspired new buzzwords, or interest in old ones, from “quiet firing,” when an employer treats someone poorly so they will leave, to “stealth layoffs,” a term big law has used for decades to let employees go without firing them, thereby giving them time to find a job.
The interview with Walsh also touched on an interesting macroeconomic dynamic: Despite the Federal Reserve’s course, to raise interest rates to slow down the economy, which it has said will likely cause people to lose work, the jobs report was surprisingly bright for September.
Walsh said he thought increased interest in certain industries, including hospitals re-hiring to cover elective surgeries, and manufacturing starting up again post-pandemic, was driving the surge.
Despite layoffs hitting the tech industry, “A lot of companies are still hiring,” he said. “You’re still hearing it every day.”
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