When Tracy Travaglio of Pittsburgh returned to the classroom in fall of 2021 after more than a year teaching online, it was clear she was no longer solely a teacher.
She was a symptom checker. A mask enforcer. A custodian, disinfecting desks between class periods. And those tasks were on top of the increasing paperwork that had crept over the years into her job teaching high school English, writing, and journalism.
Panic attacks became a regular part of her day. “I felt like my number one job was to keep myself and my students safe at that point,” says Travaglio, who has a three-year-old son. “Everything else became secondary.”
As Covid restrictions ease, millions of workers are realizing their old ways of earning a living aren’t tenable anymore.
Though millions of people have been quitting their jobs at record levels, they’re not abandoning work forever. They’re just finding new jobs. And alongside a desire for greater financial security, some people are rethinking their entire career paths.
“Individuals are evaluating what is important and fulfilling to them, and that may mean a career change,” says Liz Cannata, vice president of human resources at online jobs platform CareerBuilder. “With more flexible, remote positions and skills-based hiring in a tough candidate market, employers are also open to more candidates.”
That means there’s opportunity for workers to transfer their skills to a new industry or type of job when they may not otherwise draw attention to their resume.
Here are three reasons why people are quitting their jobs, and how you might consider your next career move.
1. Burnout and Dissatisfaction
Salary isn’t the only reason workers are leaving their jobs.
A March survey by the Pew Research Center found that while low pay was the primary reason people left their jobs last year, it was closely followed by respondents saying they lacked opportunities for advancement in their role. And 35% of people said that feeling disrespected at work was a major reason they left.
One study from the University of Chicago found that employees worked more hours during the pandemic, but their productivity dropped. For many people, working for the past two years may feel like running on a treadmill that never turns off.
Dian Grier, a clinical therapist with online counseling platform Choosing Therapy, has noticed her clients feeling resentment toward their employers who want them to return to the office after two years of working from home. Not only will they need to take on the costs of going to work and dressing for business; they’ll lose focus time to commuting and “the sense of balance they began to feel while working from home,” Grier says.
Travaglio had been teaching for 13 years when she decided she had to stop. “The longer I taught, the more it became less about the kids and more about paperwork, more about test scores, more about stats and less about what was actually happening in your classroom.
She got jaded, she says, but deciding to leave was the hardest decision of her life.
“Teaching is a profession that it almost seems like once you’re in it, you’re in it for life, and there’s a lot of guilt associated with leaving,” she says.
Travaglio was already working part-time on the side as a stylist for subscription service Stitch Fix, which gave her a creative outlet for her love of fashion. She and her husband, who were already thinking about selling their house to move to a less expensive neighborhood, experimented with different budget scenarios to see how they’d fare financially if Travaglio left her job.
Selling their house in exchange for a cheaper mortgage helped convince her that she could quit her job. Switching their son from full-time to part time daycare helped save money too, to the tune of about $500 per month.
It’s been almost an entire academic year since Travaglio left teaching, and she says her brain is just starting to “unwind.”
2. Keeping Pandemic Flexibility
The pandemic taught people that plenty of work gets done, even when everyone has a slightly different schedule or is juggling various priorities at home.
A study highlighted by Harvard Business Review found that 59% of workers find flexibility more important than salary. It suggests that workers seek autonomy to decide when and where they work rather than a set hybrid schedule of in-person and remote work days.
Twenty-four percent of respondents of the Pew Research Center survey said child care issues drove them to quit their jobs; 25% said their role didn’t have enough flexibility to choose working hours, while 20% said they were simply working too much.
If employers aren’t willing to extend flexible scheduling to their workers, people are ready to take their skills elsewhere.
Cannata said that work-from-home remote job listings on CareerBuilder see seven times more applicants than on-location roles. “While some workers want to be in the office, some prefer a mix and others want to be solely remote,” she says. “Employers will need to be flexible as one size doesn’t fit all. Flexibility and work-life balance will continue to be important to attract and retain workers.”
Grier says her clients are “looking for freedom” that maintains or expands upon the flexibility they saw during the initial days of the pandemic. “I am sensing that companies are not adapting quickly enough, and those companies that do pick up on this new trend will be able to thrive with the best and brightest of these individuals,” she says.
3. Pay a Factor, but Not Sole Motivation
Even if pay is a secondary reason workers are considering a career change, it’s a hard one to ignore. Rapidly rising inflation over the past year has made many households realize how far their income really stretches—or doesn’t.
A March Forbes Advisor-YouGov survey found that the majority of workers who received pay raises said the increase wasn’t enough to cover their rising costs due to inflation.
And half of respondents said they were considering quitting their job to get a salary increase elsewhere.
But just because lots of people have quit their jobs and there are still plenty of available ones means there’s a natural fit for everyone. It’s typically easier for lower-wage workers to switch jobs quickly because there are more entry-level or service-related jobs available, like in the hospitality sector. As your skills get more specialized, it may take more work to match your experience with a realistic new path.
Cannata says networking in your desired new field is a crucial step when considering a career change. Online courses can also help you build skills and comfort level in your future line of work.
But the current hiring climate may offer shortcuts to a new career. Some sectors are easing up on certification requirements to get people into roles quicker, and requirements like college degrees are getting eliminated from some types of work, according to Bloomberg.
Travaglio continues to work part-time for Stitch Fix, has taken on some freelance content creation work and is boosting her presence on her personal style-focused Instagram account. She hopes her experience in fashion, technology and social media will draw attention to her resume, along with a master’s degree in communications she completed while she was teaching.
She’s not sure at this point if she wants to go back to full-time work or continue working part-time for a while. It’s a luxury, Travaglio says, to have the time and resources to think through her next move.
“It’s not lost on me that so many other people are almost stuck in their situations right now because of the pandemic,” she says. “And the pandemic is what allowed me to get out of my situation.”
