Does the Tendency for 'Quiet Quitting' Differ across Generations? Evidence from the UK

Odessa S. Hamilton (), Daniel Jolles and Grace Lordan
Additional contact information
Odessa S. Hamilton: London School of Economics
Daniel Jolles: London School of Economics

No 16240, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The post-COVID-19 phenomenon of 'quiet quitting' could be problematic for UK economic growth because unpaid overtime has been a key contributor to business productivity since the 2008 global financial crisis. Here, we explore the extent to which this phenomenon exists in the UK, and whether the tendency for 'quiet quitting' differs across generations. We analysed data from the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) between 2007-2022 to determine changes in hours worked. Quiet quitting was characterised by notable declines in hours worked between 2019-2022, benchmarked against 2007-2018 trajectories. Analyses were demarcated by four commonly defined generational cohorts (i.e., Generation Z [GenZs; 1997-2004], Generation Y [Millennials; 1981-1996], Generation X [GenXers; 1965-1980], and Baby Boomers [1952-1964]). Overall, we found that the UK workforce reduced hours by ~28 hours per year post-pandemic. Hours lost was most notable in 2022, with hours down by ~36 hours. However, in assessing generational differences, quiet quitting was most pronounced in the two younger cohorts. GenZs showed the steepest decline in hours worked, while Millennials worked the least number of hours overall, with no indication of recovery by the end of the study period. Hours declined for GenXers and Baby Boomers, but changes were more moderate, and Baby Boomers showed evidence of a possible rebound to pre-pandemic levels. Given the ~24,568 million UK full-time workers in 2022, our findings equate to over 55 million discretionary hours lost to the labour market per year between 2019-2022, 48.1% of which is accounted for by Millennials. Thus, we evidence that quiet quitting has interrupted the recovery of working hours in the UK to prepandemic levels, and lost hours are especially attributable to younger cohorts.

Keywords: quiet quitting; generations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2023-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16240.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16240

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().