”You can’t quiet fire me; I’ve already quiet quit!”
It’s entirely likely that an astonished employer will hear something like that one day soon enough. Because in our era, the worker-employer relationship has gotten completely askew, unlike anything most anyone has ever known.
It was long the case that there were periods when workers held the upper hand, and other times when employers were mostly in the driver’s seat. It was a balance that shifted in one direction or the other over time, with the unemployment rate serving as a broad marker of which side would be better off.
Not at the moment, though. Not at all.
The Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate for the year ended in September stood at a mere 3.5%, once again matching a half-century low.
This number is deceptive in the extreme, telling only a part of the tale. Because at present, there are fully 3 million fewer people in the workforce than there were in early 2020, before the coming of the coronavirus pandemic.
The unemployment rate, as it is officially tabulated, does not count people who are not actively looking for work. As such, it can greatly understate the number of people who aren’t working at any given time. What happens, plainly put: Since many folks are neither working nor bothering to seek employment, the jobless rate is reported as extraordinarily low, painting an unduly rosy picture of the actual situation.
Our era has given birth to any number of new expressions. “The great resignation.” “Quiet quitting.” “Quiet firing.”
The great resignation is broadly defined as the post-pandemic period during which many folks quit their jobs. And quiet quitting? It’s a fancy way of saying that someone who still technically holds down a job and is collecting a paycheck is doing the bare minimum, just enough to keep from being fired.
Which leads, of course, to the fairly new notion of quiet firing. This is what happens when an employer is getting ready to let an individual go, but hasn’t yet taken that step. Simply put, the folks who’ve been quiet quitting — doing the absolute minimum — will be the first in line to go. When the staff needs to be trimmed, those who’ve been coasting will get the ax.
Not yet, though. Not until there’s some employment equilibrium again.
— Tribune News Service
