The Great Resignation: Why NYC is thriving under the lowest resignation rates in the U.S.?
Linda Pagan, 64 years old, recalled her memories inside her hat shop: The Hat Shop, which she opened in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood for 27 years. She wasn’t quite sure whether she quit or got fired from her first job as a broker in reinsurance, where she worked for ten years. But she remembered her boss telling her, “you need to do something else; this is killing you.”
Instead of finding her passion in hats right away, Pagan went to bartending school and soon became a bartender at the Temple bar. Pagan knew she didn’t want to bartend for the rest of her life, but after trying different things, nothing really worked out for her. She then asked herself a question. “What do you like to do?” On this late autumn rainy night, Pagan’s answer is presented under the dim streetlight inside her hat shop with slow jazz music playing in the background.
“You know what, I really love hats.”
Pagan is one of many milliners in New York City, but her story of finding the career that she is passionate about may resonate with a larger group of people. Especially right now, the number of people resigning from their jobs is at record levels and only worsening. But people like Pagan might prove passion is the factor that pulls the resignation rate down in New York City.
Over the last year, the rate of resignation in the United States has reached highs not seen since December 2000, in a phenomenon now widely called the “Great Resignation.” The national average is 2.99%. But in New York City, a different reality is unfolding: surprisingly, as of September 2022, New York nobly holds the lowest resignation rate of 1.91% in the U.S. So what has made New York so immune?
The Brazilian-Japanese artist Mariana Harumi Oushiro left Brazil for New York City because she wanted to be free and create. She knew she would eventually go on a predetermined path to get a career if she stayed, but she did not want to follow that path.
“For years, I try not to be one (an artist) because I avoided it,” said Oushiro,31, inside her art studio on Broadway. “Once I realized there was no other way for me, I wouldn’t be happy any other way. I decided to just go for it.” Her love for art is dispersed into graphites, oil pastels, and canvas scattering inside the studio.
Oushiro thought Times Square was dangerous in a psychological way when she visited it for the first time. “I felt pretty much aware of the danger of capitalism. I just felt like the city consumes too much.” Even though Oushiro thinks it is a dangerous city, she enjoys it. “Because [the city] is full of temptations and possibilities, and you have to be very mature to know how to navigate the city.” She saw many people leaving the city and figured out why. “You got to know what you want. They are leaving because they have no direction. And if you have no direction in a city that gives you all points, you kind of get lost,” Oushiro said while trying to wipe down the black graphite on her hands.
After living and working in the city for eight years, Oushiro knows what she wants and finds her unique path in the city that gives her all access to becoming an artist. Advika Srinivasan also sees there is more than one possible path to navigate in the city, so she decides to stay after graduating from college.
Srinivasan, 20, is a junior at New York University majoring in Economics. She has quite a few subjects that she is interested in during high school, and when choosing a major in college, she weighs the job prospects of a major over others. “If I like it, and it also helps me career-wise, I would choose it over something I like, but is not the best for my career,” Srinivasan continued, “I really like theater, but I also like economics, and I can get a job with economics.”
Srinivasan expressed her nervousness about the competitiveness in the economic job market after graduation. “It’s quite a general major, but [there are] a lot of the core skills, like how to interpret data. I feel like if I don’t get the job in the business-related field, I’ll be fine,” with confidence in her major area, Srinivasan knows she could appropriate her skills to another related field. “My dream job is in the business side of entertainment. So, I think there are a ton of transferable skills in that.”
With adequate economics skills, Srinivasan could freely pursue her passion in any economics or business-related field. But it takes more work for Dongping Song (my partner) to pursue his passion in academia with a totally different background.
After graduating from college in China with a degree in computational mechanics, Song went to Columbia University to pursue his Ph.D. degree, where he bumped into Earth science after taking a course in climate change. “This is a very rare area of study for international students,” said Song, 31 years old. Knowing that it is a rare focus of study with high competition, Song still chose to follow his passion and stayed in academia as an oceanographer.
“I just want to focus on one thing and keep perfecting it,” Song said. While talking about his passion for his field, Song once pondered whether to stay in academia or go into industries in the future. He knows there will be more job opportunities if he goes into industries, but he also doesn’t want to let go of his passion.
Song graduated from Columbia University with a Ph.D. degree in 2022, and he has already started his next step in the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar. “I want to work in a competitive place with other outstanding scholars,” Song said. “That helps me to grow better as a researcher.”
Song prefers to stay in academia and maybe become a professor at an institution. “Passion is always the driving power that pushes me to go beyond,” said Song.
