What happened was that the great recession of 2007-2009 gave employers the upper hand right when we were coming out of college. Boomers put the walls up, kept us out of the good jobs and sent the entry level away to other countries.
Since then it’s been nothing but instability and being blamed over and over for something that isn’t our fault, while HR people monitor our responses to restrict our free speech and our wages are depressed on the route to termination when it’s convenient to the employer. But the housing prices keep going up.
What’s happening here is that we’re just saying “enough of this bullshit. Nothing is in it for us.” We’re tired of spending our lives chasing illusionary careers that just upend our lives and then later disregard them. We’d rather just live poor and be stable, not having to deal with the bullshit and still having the old generation who screwed this up but kept it good for themselves give the lectures.
That’s why there is a great resignation. We’ve had it. No, blaming it on “white privilege” won’t help you rehabilitate the system with a slightly altered racial alignment, and no you won’t in this late era convince us that what is on top eventually trickles down the bottom. The system is broken and we have known it and will know it and have no incentive to pretend it’s working. We knew it back then but we had hoped it would be repaired.
The reason we’re having a “great resignation” is that people are figuring out that trickle down economics don’t work. You’re loyal to employers who only want to lower your wages and fire you as soon as it’s convenient. Might as well quit instead of get fired, drive cars that are registered to dead people and not buy houses.