Personal Finance
Why the ‘great resignation’ became the ‘great stay’: labor economists
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The U.S. job market has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years, from one characterized by record levels of employee turnover to one in which there is little churn.
In short, the “great resignation” of 2021 and 2022 has morphed into what some labor economists call the “great stay,” a job market with low levels of hiring, quits and layoffs.
“The turbulence of the pandemic-era labor market is increasingly in the rearview mirror,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
How the job market has changed
Employers clamored to hire as the U.S. economy reopened from its Covid-fueled lull. Job openings rose to historic levels, unemployment fell to its lowest point since the late 1960s and wages grew at their fastest pace in decades as businesses competed for talent.
More than 50 million workers quit their jobs in 2022, breaking a record set just the year prior, attracted by better and ample job opportunities elsewhere.
The labor market has gradually cooled, however.
The quits rate is “below what it was prior to the start of the pandemic, after reaching a feverish peak in 2022,” said Allison Shrivastava, an economist at job site Indeed.
Hiring has slowed to its lowest rate since 2013, excluding the early days of the pandemic. Yet, layoffs are still low by historical standards.
This dynamic — more people stay in their jobs amid low layoffs and unemployment — “point to employers holding on to their workforce along with more employees staying in their current jobs,” Shrivastava said.
Big causes for the great stay
Employer “scarring” is a primary driver of the so-called great stay, ZipRecruiter’s Pollak said.
Businesses are loath to lay off workers now after struggling to hire and retain workers just a few years ago.
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But job openings have declined, reducing the number of quits, which is a barometer of worker confidence in being able to find a new gig. This dynamic is largely due to another factor: the U.S. Federal Reserve’s campaign between early 2022 and mid-2023 to raise interest rates to tame high inflation, Pollak said.
It became more expensive to borrow, leading businesses to pull back on expansion and new ventures, and in turn, reduce hiring, she said. The Fed started cutting interest rates in September, but signaled after its latest rate cut on Wednesday that it would move slower to reduce rates than previously forecast.
Overall, dynamics suggest a “stabilizing labor market, though one still shaped by the lessons of recent shocks,” said Indeed’s Shrivastava.
The great stay means Americans with a job have “unprecedented job security,” Pollak said.
But those looking for a job — including new college graduates and workers dissatisfied with their current role — will likely have a tough time finding a gig, Pollak said. She recommends they widen their search and perhaps try to learn new skills.
After a strong start to the holiday season, consumer spending is on track to reach record levels this year. But many of those purchases will soon be returned.
December’s peak shopping days are closely followed by the busiest month for sending items back, which experts dub “Returnuary.”
This year, returns are expected to amount to 17% of all merchandise sales, totaling $890 billion in returned goods, according to a recent report by the National Retail Federation — up from a return rate of about 15% of total U.S. retail sales, or $743 billion in returned goods, in 2023.
Even though returns happen throughout the year, they are much more prevalent during the holiday season, the NRF also found. As shopping reaches a peak, retailers expect their return rate for the holidays to be 17% higher, on average, than usual.
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“Ideally, I hope there is a world in which you can reduce the percent of returns,” said Amena Ali, CEO of returns solution company Optoro, but “the problem is not going to abate any time soon.”
How returns became an $890 billion problem
With the explosion of online shopping during and since the pandemic, customers got increasingly comfortable with their buying and returning habits and more shoppers began ordering products they never intended to keep.
Nearly two-thirds of consumers now buy multiple sizes or colors, some of which they then send back, a practice known as “bracketing,” according to Happy Returns.
Even more — 69% — of shoppers admit to “wardrobing,” or buying an item for a specific event and returning it afterward, a separate report by Optoro found. That’s a 39% increase from 2023.
Largely because of these types of behaviors, 46% of consumers said they are returning goods multiple times a month — a 29% jump from last year, according to Optoro.
All of that back-and-forth comes at a hefty price.
“With behaviors like bracketing and rising return rates putting strain on traditional systems, retailers need to rethink reverse logistics,” David Sobie, Happy Returns’ co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.
What happens to returned goods
Processing a return costs retailers an average of 30% of an item’s original price, Optoro found. But returns aren’t just a problem for retailers’ bottom line.
Often returns do not end up back on the shelf, and that also causes issues for retailers struggling to enhance sustainability, according to Spencer Kieboom, founder and CEO of Pollen Returns, a return management company.
Sending products back to be repackaged, restocked and resold — sometimes overseas — generates even more carbon emissions, assuming they can be put back in circulation.
In some cases, returned goods are sent straight to landfills, and only 54% of all packaging was recycled in 2018, the most recent data available, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Returns in 2023 created 8.4 billion pounds of landfill waste, according to Optoro.
That presents a major challenge for retailers, not only in terms of the lost revenue, but also in terms of the environmental impact of managing those returns, said Rachel Delacour, co-founder and CEO of Sweep, a sustainability data management firm. “At the end of the day, being sustainable is a business strategy.”
To that end, companies are doing what they can to keep returns in check.
In 2023, 81% of U.S. retailers rolled out stricter return policies, including shortening the return window and charging a return or restocking fee, according to another report from Happy Returns.
While restocking fees and shipping charges may help curb the amount of inventory that is sent back, retailers also said that improving the returns experience was a key goal for 2025.
Now 33% of retailers, including Amazon and Target, are allowing their customers to simply “keep it,” offering a refund without taking the product back.
For shoppers, return policies are key
Increasingly, return policies and expectations are an important predictor of consumer behavior, according to Happy Returns’ Sobie, particularly for Generation Z and millennials.
“Return policies are no longer just a post-purchase consideration — they’re shaping how younger generations shop from the start,” Sobie said.
Three-quarters, or 76%, of shoppers consider free returns a key factor in deciding where to spend their money, and 67% say a negative return experience would discourage them from shopping with a retailer again, the NRF found.
A survey of 1,500 adults by GoDaddy found that 77% of shoppers check the return policy before making a purchase.
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