Do Oklahomans really not want to work anymore in 'The Great Resignation'? Not so fast.

When Wesley Renfroe first moved to central Oklahoma from Florida in 2014, he was a 18-year-old high school student, gearing up to pursue a degree in biomedical engineering. He found work almost immediately as a waiter at one, and then two, diner-style restaurants, where he took orders, served food, cashed out tickets and occasionally washed the never-ending pile of dishes.

The work was tiresome, with frequently long hours and sometimes rude customers, but the tips he made as a server more than made up for it, ensuring his loyalty to the job for years. His position as a server allowed him to pay bills while juggling a tedious course schedule as a college student and still put some money into savings.

By spring 2020, that was no longer the case.

“When the pandemic hit initially, I found out we were closed through a coworker who was telling me he wasn’t going in, and then I had to call management to figure out if I still had a job, which is not the way that should have happened,” Renfroe said. “And business fell off drastically, but as long as the government was willing to pay for it, we were given CARES Act money. But when that ran out, we didn’t really get anything else. It was quite a drop, and because of that we had a lot of people leave.”

Replacements did not come quickly, and even when Renfroe tried to pick up extra shifts, they were understaffed, with not enough customers coming in the doors, and not enough of them tipping well. Renfroe stuck it out for a year, hoping the situation would improve, but it did not. By summer 2021, he’d had enough — and quit.

Renfroe was among a massive wave of workers, in Oklahoma and across the U.S., who decided during the pandemic that they’d had enough. Since early 2021, millions of U.S. citizens have quit their jobs in what has now been called “The Great Resignation.”

“I’d had enough of waiting tables,” Renfroe said. “I’d had enough of people not adjusting their expectations. I’d had enough of being asked to do more, even though there were less of us and even less time to do what we needed to do it in. That’s why I went to look for a different job.”

According to a recent survey by Oklahoma State University, an estimated 45% of respondents said they were considering leaving their current jobs, too, in the next 6 months.

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At first glance, results of such studies might bolster the common criticism during “The Great Resignation” that “no one wants to work anymore,” an oft-heard accusation hurled by many business owners at young people and even echoed by some politicians.

But Travis Roach, an economics professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, disputes this criticism, saying the charge is akin to a false accusation that doesn’t align with deeper factual analysis.

“It’s funny the moniker that something can get out of nowhere,” Roach said. “To a labor economist, the way I see it framed better is as ‘The Great Reallocation.’ What we’re actually seeing is a lot of labor market churn, which is honestly a really great sign of a healthy labor market.”

Roach pointed to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or “JOLTS,” report published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for January. The data separates “hires,” “separations,” “quits” and “fires,” allowing researchers to better understand what job openings are initiated by employees or employers.

“Reading the tea leaves on this, it looks like it’s mostly employee-motivated, which means that these are people moving to better opportunities,” Roach said. “I cannot stand the current narrative with the idea that no one wants to work. There is literally no evidence of that.”

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Roach urged people to remember that the U.S. is still digging its way out of “the greatest recession of (his) lifetime,” but that an economy in which “We’re Hiring” signs are plastered everywhere is a sign of a much healthier economy than one plagued with “We’re Closed” signs.

Experts also point to an ongoing battle for higher wages at multiple high-profile companies, driven by a renewed sense of self-worth among workers, who now value more work-life balance, adequate pay and decent employee benefits after a global pandemic.

“I think it’s also just what we now expect out of work, where we want to work and some of the non-monetary benefits that come with work,” Roach said. “That could be who you’re working alongside, how close it is to your home, how flexible it is, if you can spend time with your children if they get sick or have to take school online. I think we’ve just had a big reconsideration of what we expect from our jobs.”

Renfroe agrees, saying he now enjoys his full-time job as a tutor at Oklahoma City Community College’s Math Lab more than he ever did during his several years in the food service industry.

“From what I’ve seen, it’s really a worker’s market right now,” Renfroe said. “If you’re looking to find a better job, there are a lot of places hiring, and it wasn’t that way a year ago. If you’ve got the opportunity and you think you want to switch, go for it, because you don’t know how long it’ll be before the balance tips back out of our favor.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahomans quit jobs for better work, not to be lazy, economist says