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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We have about 15 minutes before Ask the Mayor. For this little period of time, we're going to open up the phones for people who have quit your jobs during the pandemic. Why in the face of so much uncertainty, did you decide to leave and what are you doing now? 646-435-7280. According to a recent Microsoft survey, more than 40% of workers globally have been considering leaving their jobs in the past year. Are you one of the people who actually made that leap? 646-435-7280.

Did you catch the recent article in the New York times that was one of the inspirations for us doing this on the so-called YOLO economy. For those of you who don't know, YOLO, Y-O-L-O stands for You Only Live Once.

Reports are that millennials, especially after a year of Slack and Zoom burnout are leaving their jobs in surprisingly large numbers, in some cases for completely different careers. Some have turned their side hustles into full-time gigs or heading back to school. Wondering if this is a millennial thing. Did any of you in other age groups also do that? Who decided life is too short to be stuck at your current job? How are you navigating this? What did you tell your parents? 646-435-7286, 646-435-7280. For anybody who quit your job during the pandemic while other people were losing theirs involuntarily.

Another angle, if you're a person of color, did you quit your job because your employer didn't commit to racial justice in a way you felt was appropriate or sufficient. Maybe you left to become involved in a career that's more aligned with diversity and inclusion, or maybe you're striking out on your own to build a career that centers racial justice, 646-435-7280. Funny enough recent reporting shows that many sectors are struggling to find employees right now, not just tech companies, where there's always a shortage of that training, but restaurants and trucking companies as well. We've taken calls on this from some restaurant owners.

If you're in an industry that's hiring and you're not going back as a worker to that industry, what are you doing instead? Did you put your stimulus checks and extended unemployment toward your own change of life? 646-435-7280. We'll take your calls after this.

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Brian Lehrer Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your calls, if you have quit your job during the pandemic. Chris in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chris.

Chris: Hey, Brian, how's it going?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What job did you quit?

Chris: I was a teacher for 14 years actually.

Brian Lehrer: Did you quit because of pandemic teaching conditions or some other reason?

Chris: It was a combination of both. I have two young kids at home. They're not of school-age yet, but they were in a Montessori school, which blows and my wife's a dentist. When she reopened it was nice to have the flexibility to stay at home with the kids plus an education and especially with Hunter County, there's a lot of politics that end up messing up the system for teachers and students. It was time for me to go.

Brian Lehrer: What are you going to do next?

Chris: I've actually been a real estate agent part-time for as long as I've been a teacher. I shifted to doing that full-time. With the flexibility I have doing that and the craziness of the markets, I'm one of the lucky ones.

Brian Lehrer: How much has uncertainty over when your own kids are allowed to be in person in school, and maybe you chose full-time remote anyway, that's it's up to you, but how much has the uncertainty about the status of schools affected your ability to work?

Chris: Like I said, for me, I'm one of the lucky ones because actually in September, the school they attended, it's a little Montessori school, it's a private school, so they've been open full-time in person. They're there three days a week. Next year my son is going to be eligible for school in my town. I'm not sure if they're going to be remote or not, but if they're remote, that's going to be certainly an issue. I might opt to send him back to the private school for one more year.

Brian Lehrer: Chris, thank you very much. That raises a whole other set of issues about parents, but that's for another call-in and Monte on the Upper West Side, you're on WNYC. Hi, Monte.

Monte: Hey, good morning, Brian. I was furloughed sometime last year, like around March, then I stayed home and I decided basically to day trade and I was making so much money that was no longer looking for job. Even my boss, my company called me back and I decided not to go back because I was making more than twice my salary working only a couple of hours per day.

Brian Lehrer: Did you buy GameStop?

Monte: No, I didn't trade games. I traded really mainly the pharmaceutical, like the one coming with like a Novavax like Moderna, things like that when they were working on vaccine

Speaker 1: Smart.

Speaker 2: -and they shot through the roof. Several technology companies shot through the roof. Company that are really directly related to the pandemic like Peloton, like Beyond. The biggest one is really Amazon. Unfortunately this year, things are not working. Now the stock market is yoyoing. Before, you buy and you keep it or you can go out and come back, you made several thousand dollars. Now you have to keep your eyes on the screen because it's really flipflopping, it's yoyoing. I'll give you an example today, Amazon came with excellent earnings. It opened up then it went negative, then went up, then down. Nothing is sure now anymore. Maybe I have to go back and look for a job now.

Brian Lehrer: Monte thank you. What a story. Thank you very much. Emily and Roselle Park. You're on WNYC. Hi, Emily.

Emily: Hi, Brian. Wow, this is so cool. I love your show. Basically, I want to say that I was employed at a building supply company, supplying windows, doors, that kind of stuff for contractors and everything. I started right before the pandemic. I actually had to take about two months off just because there wasn't enough business at the time once the whole lockdown in New Jersey started and everything. After those two months, I came back and I stayed with the company for probably six months or so. It was really a struggle because I have a one-year-old and I could not find childcare for her anywhere not even with family, because the only family member that could take care of her was homeschooling four kids. I quit my job at the building supply company to become an Instacart shopper, which has actually been great because I just take my daughter with me every single day. It's worked out really well to give us some flexibility.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, you can take a one-year-old with you. You're one of those people who goes into a store and you're communicating by text message or something with the person who wants the delivery of their groceries and they're like, "Oh yes, they don't have the turkey, will you take chicken?" That kind of thing?

Emily: Exactly. I take my own car, pick up whichever orders I want. If we're having a rough day and she needs to just nap or eat or whatever, I can take the time to go do those things. It's just complete flexibility and it's been really great

Brian Lehrer: Can you make a living, a decent living, as an Instacart shopper.

Emily: Believe it or not, this has been significantly more profitable than my job with the building supply company. I do this basically full-time but I've gotten pretty fast. I would say I average about $20 an hour, which is pretty decent for us.

Brian Lehrer: Emily, thank you very much. Good luck out there. We're going to go next to, where are we going? George in Ditmas Park? You're on WNYC. Hi, George.

George: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I quit my second job. I'm a library worker full time, but I also was doing part-time as a home health aide for a 90-year-old woman with dementia and I was a live-in. It was like an exchange for housing. I worked there, but then everything got turned upside down when the pandemic started and I was working more like full time and I couldn't go anywhere, I couldn't see anyone because she was a vulnerable person, the woman I was living with. It just became much too difficult and a totally different kind of thing. After a few months, my partner and I decided to move in together, and so I moved out. That was just really lucky and wonderful to be able to change that.

Also, it was very sad and weird to leave after having lived with a woman for two years and not really getting to say goodbye or to visit after. Now that we're both vaccinated, I'm looking forward to seeing her again even though she won't remember me, but I have lots of good memories from my years there.

Brian Lehrer: How fraught was it at the beginning of the pandemic to be a home health aide? I know people who died for one thing and I know others who whether they were the client or whether they were the aide, they both wanted to keep their professional relationship going. Sometimes the elderly person really needed the aide just to get through their day, but so much fear.

George It was really scary and very difficult. We cut back the number of people who were helping her. It was a cold crew of us that would help her. Her family can afford that care, so she's lucky in that way. She is safe because she lives on her own, and with us.

We cut down to a small group and so we were just suddenly so overworked and we're so scared because it was like even if you-- I didn't leave the house but to go for a small walk where I'd walk in the middle of the street to avoid anybody because I just thought, if I even touch a doorknob, I could bring it back into the house. It was a really scary for those months. Especially those first three months of the pandemic, we just were basically totally isolated with her.

Brian Lehrer: George, thank you for your call. I hope everything works out for you. We frame this segment as who left this job because of YOLO, You Only Live Once, to pursue your passions, but we know that people are also leaving careers, not just as home health aides, also in other kinds of health care. In teaching, we had a teacher call in. In journalism because of how stressful and even traumatic this year has been. That's another motivation for people leaving their jobs voluntarily.

Cecilia in Fort Greene. You're on WNYC. Hi Cecilia.

Cecilia: Hi Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I'm not a millennial, I'm in my late 50s and I'm leaving a really fantastic job. I run the Brooklyn Community Foundation. I'm the CEO and I've been there eight years. We had a very busy year with COVID, raising money and distributing money to support Brooklynites during the pandemic. I decided to leave the foundation and I'm going to go back to school and get my master's in social work, which is a longstanding dream for me.

Brian Lehrer: Are you going to become a certain kind of social worker? I know social workers do many things.

Cecilia: Yes. Good question. I'm interested in clinical social work. I've always had an interest in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. I'm actually going to NYU which has a great clinical program.

Brian Lehrer: You don't have to reveal your salary, but you're a CEO as you described it and I realize of a not-for-profit foundation, but social workers don't make a lot of money. Are you choosing to be downwardly mobile?

Cecilia: I am choosing to be downwardly mobile. I understand there's some risk there, but that's why I think these life decisions they're not 100%. I thought very hard about it and I was willing to make that change and take the risk.

Brian Lehrer: The pandemic inspired you to do it because of doing something even more meaningful than what you were doing, which sounds like it was already meaningful.

Cecilia: Yes. I wouldn't say actually more meaningful, just different. Actually, all my eight years at the foundation have been meaningful, to be honest, but I worked very much at a community level or a systemic level and I really wanted to also see what is change like on an individual level.

Brian Lehrer: Cecilia. Good luck. Thank you so much for calling in. Sarah in Greenpoint, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sarah.

Sarah: Hey Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I was furloughed pretty early on in the pandemic. I'm a young woman of color in the workforce and we all know how we're being disproportionately affected. I had some really good unemployment benefits and it was honestly pretty eye-opening. When I got a call back to return to my job, I did not return. I realized it was creating a lot of stress in my life and it just wasn't really worth it to me anymore.

I did find a new job. It's at a much better place and it meets my needs way better and it's way more chill. I'm pretty happy.

Brian Lehrer: Is it in the same industry, interior design?

Sarah: It's in the exact same industry, yes.

Brian Lehrer: That's a relatively small change compared to what some other people have been describing. Even that, if the pandemic put more top of mind the dissatisfactions that you had with a particular job, even if you stayed in the same field, then you learned something from it, it sounds like?

Sarah: Yes, definitely. It was really eye-opening and it was a really nice time to reflect on that. There was a bright side to the whole situation I'd say.

Brian Lehrer: Sarah, good luck. Good luck to all of you who have been changing jobs voluntarily during the pandemic. Surprising number of people, the statistics reveal, have been leaving their jobs even while others have been furloughed or laid off involuntarily. All these crises, if depending on your age, what you've lived through, there were similar conversations after 911, people looking at the meaning of their lives and changing careers as a result in a way they wouldn't have.

It happened again in the financial crisis, the great recession, even for people who didn't lose their jobs voluntarily. This is one of those other huge life events that affects everybody but then makes us look at our lives individually as well. Thank you for your calls on that.

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