3 Reasons Why Now Might Be The Perfect Time to Quit Your Job

It’s been well over a year since the global Covid-19 pandemic crippled the U.S. economy and sent our world into a tailspin. Early news reports focused, of course, on infection and death rates as well as larger economic aftershocks like a drastic drop in jobs. The unemployment rate quintupled (!) between March and April 2020 alone. 

Now that we have a shockingly effective variety of vaccines and many states across the country are beginning to reopen, you would think American workers would be settling back into a normal workflow again. 

Think again.

Workers are actually fleeing their jobs in record numbers. A staggering 3.9 million Americans quit their jobs in the month of April alone this year. That’s the highest quit rate in the history of this particular index, period. 

Is it time for you to quit your job? Here are three signs it might be.

#1 Your values have changed.  

I firmly believe that one of the few silver linings of this pandemic has been the time it has allowed us to look introspectively at our quality of life and how our work impacts it. For so long (probably too long), we’ve been building our lives around our employer and its needs. In 2020, when companies were finally forced to offer more flexibility and empathy to workers than ever before, a new way of working emerged. The worker’s needs (health, safety and security) came front and center in many cases, not the company’s. You saw a huge wave of companies introducing “Mental health days” for the first time, eliminating punishing work deadlines and offering flexibility to parents juggling children at jobs at the same time. 

From workers’ perspectives, it was a wakeup call. The way we were working before simply wasn’t sustainable. And we don’t want to go back. 

#2 Opportunities for new jobs are abundant. 

Workers aren’t just quitting their jobs to take a much-needed hiatus. There is such overwhelming demand from employers eager to staff back up now that economies are reopening that they are offering better wages and benefits to try to attract talent. Why wouldn’t you switch jobs if you were being offered higher pay and better working conditions? 

#3 You’re financially prepared to take a leap. 

Whether you were squirreling away your “stimmies” in a savings account, learning how to trade in your down time, or simply spending less on activities and items that no longer made since in a pandemic, so many Americans found themselves with a little extra cash in the bank last year. 

Something magical happens when you’ve got a financial cushion. You suddenly realize you have the power to say ‘no’ much more often. I’ve long been an advocate for wealth-building, especially for women of color, simply for this reason alone — workplaces can sometimes become hostile to our very existence, let alone our career trajectories. When we build a financial safety net, we are empowering ourselves with the ability to walk away from a toxic situation.

Employers are finally reckoning with what happens when the workforce is no longer desperate to work for anyone and endure even the most toxic cultures to make ends meet. 

We are going to quit and find a better opportunity elsewhere.