Mental health concerns precede quits: shifts in the work discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic and great resignation
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Published version
Author(s)
del Rio-Chanona, R Maria
Hermida-Carrillo, Alejandro
Sepahpour-Fard, Melody
Sun, Luning
Topinkova, Renata
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
To study the causes of the 2021 Great Resignation, we use text analysis and investigate the changes in work- and quit-related posts between 2018 and 2021 on Reddit. We find that the Reddit discourse evolution resembles the dynamics of the U.S. quit and layoff rates. Furthermore, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, conversations related to working from home, switching jobs, work-related distress, and mental health increased, while discussions on commuting or moving for a job decreased. We distinguish between general work-related and specific quit-related discourse changes using a difference-in-differences method. Our main finding is that mental health and work-related distress topics disproportionally increased among quit-related posts since the onset of the pandemic, likely contributing to the quits of the Great Resignation. Along with better labor market conditions, some relief came beginning-to-mid-2021 when these concerns decreased. Our study underscores the importance of having access to data from online forums, such as Reddit, to study emerging economic phenomena in real time, providing a valuable supplement to traditional labor market surveys and administrative data.
Date Issued
2023-10-12
Date Acceptance
2023-08-25
Citation
EPJ Data Science, 2023, 12
ISSN
2193-1127
Publisher
SpringerOpen
Journal / Book Title
EPJ Data Science
Volume
12
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-023-00417-2
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
49
Date Publish Online
2023-10-12