These Workers Are Quitting Because They Don't Have Enough Work

Summary

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Podcast Summary: WSJ Your Money Briefing

Episode: These Workers Are Quitting Because They Don't Have Enough Work
Date: March 1, 2022
Host: J.R. Whalen
Guest: t'Ping Chen, Wall Street Journal Reporter

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Episode Overview

This episode examines a surprising new factor in the ongoing “Great Resignation”: many hourly workers are quitting their jobs, not because of burnout or low pay as commonly thought, but because they're not getting enough work. Host J.R. Whalen speaks with WSJ reporter t'Ping Chen to explore why, amid headlines about worker shortages, so many employees are actually scrambling for enough paid hours—and what this means for workers and businesses alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Great Resignation: Beyond Pay & Flexibility

• Background: Over 47 million Americans quit their jobs in the past year—a record, causing major shifts in company operations.

• Impact on Companies: Companies, including big retail and restaurant chains, are struggling to cover shifts and keep stores staffed. (02:29)

  “We saw Americans quit more than 47 million jobs. … You can see that from your neighborhood Starbucks having to cut hours… because they can't keep their store going with the number of workers.”
  — t’Ping Chen [02:29]

2. The Paradox: Worker Shortage and Underemployment

• Despite the labor shortage, many hourly workers struggle to get enough hours.

• Overhiring: To cope with high turnover and pandemic-related absences, some companies are "over hiring"—sometimes bringing on up to 40% more employees than usual. (03:11, 05:06)

  “Some companies are compensating by trying to hire more. And in some cases even over hiring in rates up to … 40%.”
  — t’Ping Chen [03:11]

• This leads to workers competing for limited hours, causing underemployment and fueling even more turnover.

3. Sectors Most Affected

• Industries: Over hiring and work scarcity primarily affect restaurants, retail, and hospitality—fields reliant on hourly labor. (03:52)

  “This is really happening more in sectors that rely a lot on hourly workers. So we're talking restaurants, we're talking retail, that kind of thing. Hospitality.”
  — t’Ping Chen [03:52]

4. Overhiring: A Long-Standing Practice, Exacerbated by the Pandemic

• Overhiring as a strategy is not new, especially for companies avoiding full-time benefits.

• Pandemic Effects: Increased uncertainty, illness, and turnover have intensified the practice, making it difficult for businesses to predict staffing needs. (04:04)

  “This is something that's been going on for a long time with hourly workers, really for decades. … What's been made more complicated by the pandemic… you have a much more challenging operating environment.”
  — t’Ping Chen [04:04]

5. Real-World Impact: Worker Experiences

• Reduced Hours: Workers are hired with promises of full-time hours but often receive far less (sometimes as low as 8-25 hours per week).

• Churn and Multiple Jobs: Many, unable to make ends meet, leave quickly or take multiple jobs at once, driving high churn.

• Personal Stories:

  • Training Class Overload: One woman joined a new job in a training class twice the normal size; her hours dropped by half after an influx of hires following a wage increase.
  • Job Hopping: Another worker cycled through seven jobs during the pandemic, seeking adequate hours (07:06-07:15).

  “He had cycled through seven jobs over the course of this pandemic.”
  — t’Ping Chen [07:14]

  “I can get a job. I just can't get the hours.”
  — Worker, relayed by t’Ping Chen [07:38]

  • Multiple Jobs: Others combine gigs (e.g., Dollar General + Subway + DoorDash) to piece together sufficient income. (07:44)

6. Employer Responses and Solutions

• Scheduling Control: Companies are beginning to offer employees more control over schedules and hours.

• Priority for Existing Employees: Some, like Target and Walmart, commit to increasing hours for current staff before hiring.

• Movement to Full-Time: Moves to make more part-time roles full-time are gaining traction.

  “Walmart is an example. Of a company that's committed to making more part time employees full time.”
  — t’Ping Chen [09:14]

• Other Incentives: Raised wages, benefits, and schedule flexibility are also used to retain workers. (08:54–09:53)

7. The Balancing Act: Flexibility vs. Hours

• Not all workers want full-time hours—some need flexibility for childcare or caregiving.

• The best solution: empowering workers with choice over their schedules and hours. (10:01)

  “It's not every hourly worker or part time worker who wants to work full time… it really comes down to making sure that you're giving workers the choice.”
  — t’Ping Chen [10:01]

8. Is It Really a "Job Seeker’s Market"?

• There are plenty of jobs available, but not always enough hours at each.

• Many businesses only need peak staffing at certain times, limiting full-time opportunities.

• Companies are paying closer attention to worker retention strategies out of necessity. (10:21–11:26)

  “We're absolutely in an environment where there are a ton of companies hiring and you can certainly get jobs. But … getting the hours may be another question.”
  — t’Ping Chen [10:27]

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Notable Quotes

• On Overhiring:

  “They are certainly seeing people bringing employees in faster and also in greater numbers … And that also, of course, makes it harder to compete for hours.”
  — t’Ping Chen [05:06]

• On the Cycle of Quitting:

  “He just kept cycling through and through and eventually decided to quit. … I can get a job. I just can't get the hours.”
  — t’Ping Chen [07:36–07:38]

• On Employee Choice:

  “It really comes down to making sure that you're giving workers the choice.”
  — t’Ping Chen [10:01]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:29] – Impact of the Great Resignation on businesses
• [03:11]–[05:06] – Explanation and scope of employer overhiring
• [05:39]–[06:58] – What overhiring looks like on the ground; effects on existing employees
• [07:06]–[08:43] – Real stories from workers affected by too few hours
• [08:54]–[09:53] – Company efforts to retain workers and offer more suitable schedules
• [10:01]–[10:21] – The nuance of what hourly workers want: hours vs. flexibility
• [10:21]–[11:26] – Is this really a jobseeker’s market? The complexities

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Tone & Style

The episode maintains an informative yet empathetic tone, breaking down complicated labor and economic dynamics into real-world consequences for workers and businesses, and emphasizing the unpredictability and pressures of the current labor market.

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Conclusion:
This episode challenges the familiar narrative of the Great Resignation by spotlighting under-discussed realities for hourly workers: many aren’t quitting for better gigs—they’re leaving because they never got enough hours to begin with. The labor market’s complexities, as revealed here, show that simply having job openings isn’t the same as providing viable livelihoods—highlighting the ongoing need for employer flexibility, transparency, and worker empowerment amid rapidly changing conditions.

Transcript

[Small Business Owner]

Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it.

[Retail Industry Advocate]

Inflation is killing me, but who cares? Big retailers are making record profits. That's why we support the Durbin Marshall credit card bill.

[Small Business Owner]

See banks and credit unions help small businesses make payroll. This bill would cut the vital resources

[Retail Industry Advocate]

they need while increasing megastore profits. They deserve it, don't they?

[Consumer Advocacy Group Representative]

Tell Congress stop the Durbin Marshall money grab for corporate megastores paid for by the Electronic Payments Coalition.

[J.R. Whalen]

Here's your money briefing for Tuesday, March 1st. I'm J.R. whalen for the Wall Street Journal. By now you've heard about the Great Resignation. Workers by the millions have left their jobs over the course of the pandemic in search of better pay or maybe to achieve a better work life balance. And while that puts many companies searching for workers in a bind, it turns out many hourly employees are leaving for a surprising reason. There isn't enough work for them.

[T'Ping Chen]

In this sort of environment, when you have really high rates of turnover as well as folks falling sick, some companies are compensating by trying to hire more and in some cases even over hiring in rates up to 40%.

[J.R. Whalen]

So what does that mean for people trying to work enough hours to pay their bills? Our reporter t' Ping Chen caught up with several of them. We'll talk with her about it after the break.

[Small Business Owner]

Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it.

[Retail Industry Advocate]

Infliction is killing me, but who cares? Big retailers are making record profits. That's why we support the Durbin Marshall credit card bill.

[Small Business Owner]

See banks and credit unions help small businesses make payroll. This bill would cut the vital resources

[Retail Industry Advocate]

they need while increasing megastore profits. They deserve it, don't they?

[Consumer Advocacy Group Representative]

Tell Congress, stop the Durbin Marshall money grab for corporate megastores paid for by the Electronic Payments Coalition.

[J.R. Whalen]

Workers are quitting in record numbers in search of better pay and more flexibility. But there's another, less discussed reason why so many hourly workers are quitting. It turns out there isn't enough work for them. So how does that square with the labor market where companies are struggling to hold on to employees? WSJ reporter t' Ping Chen has been following this story and she joins us with more tapeng. Thank you so much for being here.

[T'Ping Chen]

Hey, thanks for having me.

[J.R. Whalen]

So, t', Ping, just to start out, can you give us an update here? How many people have quit their jobs? And what kind of effect is this great resignation having on companies?

[T'Ping Chen]

So over the last year, we saw Americans quit more than 47 million jobs. And that's just an extraordinary number, record setting. And it's had a huge impact on companies. You can see that from your neighborhood. Starbucks having to cut hours even in the morning because they can't keep their store going with the number of workers. They've got shops and restaurants that have had to close for certain hours other periods. Yeah, we've seen companies having to raise wages, that kind of thing. It's had ripple effects across the board.

[J.R. Whalen]

Okay. But it seems counterintuitive that with companies being so desperate for workers that so many hourly employees aren't getting the chance to work as many hours as they want. How's that happening?

[T'Ping Chen]

Yeah, well, one thing that experts have been saying is that in this sort of environment, when you have really high rates of turnover, as well as folks falling sick, some companies are compensating by trying to hire more. And in some cases even over hiring in rates up to one Expert was estimating 40%.

[Small Business Owner]

Right.

[T'Ping Chen]

To essentially make sure that you have enough bodies on the ground to keep operating. But from a worker's perspective, if you are hired along with a lot of other people at the same time, you end up jostling with other workers for hours and in many cases not getting enough hours, which in turn might drive you to quit, which just continues the cycle.

[J.R. Whalen]

Now, what sorts of businesses is this happening at?

[T'Ping Chen]

This is really happening more in sectors that rely a lot on hourly workers. So we're talking restaurants, we're talking retail, that kind of thing. Hospitality.

[J.R. Whalen]

Okay. And this idea of over hiring, is this something new?

[T'Ping Chen]

Not at all. This is something that's been going on for a long time with hourly workers, really for decades. When, and this is something that in recent years, we've seen a lot of companies do, especially to try and minimize the expense of paying for benefits that might accompany having a full time worker on your payroll. Right. So this is, it's absolutely a long standing practice in a lot of these industries. What's been made more complicated by the pandemic and Covid is of course, you have a much more challenging operating environment. You have people falling sick, you have a ton of people quitting. And so all that transpires and makes it even harder to forecast in some ways your labor needs. And so you have companies that are scrambling to try and just get people through the door to keep staffed. And it exacerbates in some cases the sense of being on a hiring treadmill, which then in turn yields more of these situations when you have dissatisfied workers getting what they feel shortchanged on ours.

[J.R. Whalen]

Okay, so how does this 40% over hiring figure compare with what's typically done? 40% seems like a lot.

[T'Ping Chen]

Yeah. I mean, it is hard to say what. You know, there aren't. There aren't great statistics. Right. But certainly anecdotally, talking to folk who watch, say, industry, you know, like the restaurant industry, for example, and retail, they. They are certainly seeing people bringing employees in faster and also in greater numbers. Right. At a certain time. So the size of a cohort might have gotten bigger, too. And that also, of course, makes it harder to compete for hours.

[J.R. Whalen]

All right, so how does this actually work in practice? Do they bring in all the people on board at once?

[T'Ping Chen]

Yeah, it often can look like that. Right. One of the women that we spoke to for the story was describing coming in as part of a training class that was double the size of the company's historical norm. So, sure, yeah. It could be people coming in all at once. It could be more. Just, you know, bringing more people through the door. A perpetual kind of addition, addition, addition. And meanwhile, you know, you get workers who are unhappy and leave, and so they bring in more people. And depending on how the scales balance out, a lot of workers might end up feeling shortchanged. Sometimes this might happen, too, in the wake of, say, even a pay rise could prompt something like this to happen. In this great resignation, we have seen a lot of companies raising wages as a result. In one case of a worker that we spoke to, her company or her restaurant, rather, raised wages. Consequently, there was an influx of workers that joined the restaurant. They just hired up a ton of folk. Her hours dropped by more than a half because they had, all of a sudden, a glut of workers, and it took a few months. She was very tempted to quit. She was a single mother. And as it happened, actually, after a few months, things shook out, and a lot of these new workers ended up quitting. So it all worked out for her fine. But it is sort of indicative of the kind of pattern that can happen in this sort of very strange economy that we're living through right now.

[J.R. Whalen]

Okay, so that worked out for her. But you spoke with a few other hourly workers who faced a lot of hurdles along the way. Tell us about some of them.

[T'Ping Chen]

Yeah, really across the board. One worker was really striking. I spoke to him. He had cycled through seven jobs over the course of this pandemic.

[J.R. Whalen]

Wow, seven jobs.

[T'Ping Chen]

Yeah, it's really, really striking as well, But I think that's what is. So, you know, when you really sort of open the hood on Some of these statistics on the quote, unquote, create resignation. You see, right, it's not 47 million Americans quitting. It's 47 million jobs that have been quit, often by, you know, the same worker who's just churning through, trying to find an environment that's actually going to allow them to make the paycheck that they need. And in each, each of those occasions, he was sharing how he would say, look, I want, you know, I want 40 hours. And hiring managers would sound really optimistic. But then when it came down to it, he would get maybe eight to 25 hours. And he really felt like he just, you know, he knew if he stuck around longer as the ranks of the other employees who they had also hired at the same time thinned, there was a chance his hours would go up. But he just felt like, look, in this environment, I'm not going, you know, I can get a job as soon as I walk at the door. That said, of course, you know, as he also put it to me, I can get a job. I just can't get the hours. So he just kept cycling through and through and eventually decided to quit. He was bouncing between sort of retail and restaurants, and he ended up deciding he wanted to be an amt, and that's what he's training to do. Now. In another case of a worker, it was a situation where he was working at A Dollar General and just not getting the. He had to get a second job working at a Subway sandwich shop and even a third job doing DoorDash. And that's another really common way that a lot of workers compensate, picking up extra shifts at second jobs, third jobs, in the case of, say, you know, doing a lot of doordash, that kind of thing.

[J.R. Whalen]

Okay, so I get that companies are trying to cover themselves because of the resignations and such, but that puts a strain on companies when there's that kind of high turnover. So what are they trying to do to keep workers from leaving?

[T'Ping Chen]

A lot of different things. Some companies are trying to give workers more control over their schedules. Historically, hourly workers who are really the ones faced with these kinds of issues, they get hit with a lot of things, whether it's lack of notice for their schedules or not being given any choice in the matter of what sort of hours they work. And so a lot of companies are trying to address those issues as well as committing to giving their existing employees more hours before hiring on new ones. So that's something that we've heard companies talk about doing. Target is one example. Walmart is an example. Of a company that's committed to making more part time employees full time. So it's absolutely something that companies are thinking about. And then of course, there's the spectrum of other things that we've seen being used as inducements during this time, whether it's raised wages or better benefits, more flexibility, that kind of thing. But definitely on the hours front, it comes down to more flexibility and often as well, giving workers a chance to work more.

[J.R. Whalen]

So workers want more hours, but they also want more flexibility, which would seem like maybe not as many hours. So where's the balance there?

[T'Ping Chen]

Yeah, you know, that's a great question and a good observation. It's not every hourly worker or part time worker who wants to work full time. Right. There's plenty of folk, and especially in the pandemic, who are faced with different kinds of issues, childcare, what have you, caregiving, who don't want to work a full 40 hours a week. And so it really comes down to making sure that you're giving workers the choice.

[J.R. Whalen]

And so ultimately, does this mean that we're not in a job seekers market as much as we hear we are?

[T'Ping Chen]

We're absolutely in an environment where there are a ton of companies hiring and you can certainly get jobs. But as the worker we were talking about before put it, getting the hours may be another question. That's a problem that's long been around and it's one that frankly at this point is still very much an issue. And so I think it's one that we're seeing companies contending with. But also at the same time, these are a lot of these businesses, whether you're a restaurant or a shop, they may only have a certain number of peak hours. They may only really need to staff up with full staffing at certain hours. And so you really can see how for businesses, too often their hands are tied. They can't really necessarily to afford to have bodies on the floor when they don't need them. And so it's a tricky situation all around. But certainly we can see in this kind of environment, a lot of businesses are paying a lot more attention to trying to identify what can we do to keep folks on the job and happy, because they absolutely have to. And whether it's wages or scheduling, this is something I think that's gonna be more and more part of the conversation.

[J.R. Whalen]

All right, that's Wall Street Journal reporter t' Ping Chen with us. T', Ping, thank you so much for being with us.

[T'Ping Chen]

Thanks for having me.

[J.R. Whalen]

And that's your Money briefing. I'm J.R. whalen for the Wall Street Journal.

[Small Business Owner]

Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees, but I don't really need it.

[Retail Industry Advocate]

Inflation is killing me, but who cares? Big retailers are making record profits. That's why we support the Durbin Marshall credit card bill.

[Small Business Owner]

See banks and credit unions help small businesses make payroll. This bill would cut the vital resources

[Retail Industry Advocate]

they need while increasing megastore profits. They deserve it, don't they?

[Consumer Advocacy Group Representative]

Tell Congress, stop the Durbin Marshall money grab for corporate megastores paid for by the Electronic Payments Coalition.