Hustle culture is out. 'Quiet quitters' now make up half the U.S. workforce
At least half of all U.S. workers now do the bare minimum of what's required from them at their jobs, according to a new survey from Gallup.
Industry watchers and workforce experts have adopted the term "quiet quitting" to describe such workers: people who have chosen to reject the hustle culture that has dominated conversations around work and career for decades.
And in a pandemic era that has physically and emotionally stretched many employees thin, some have begun to speak up about some of the indignities of the modern workplace.
While quiet quitting is sometimes defined as simply enforcing boundaries between work life and personal life, the Gallup survey paints a different picture. The survey attributes the decline in engagement at work to a lack of clarity about expectations, fewer opportunities to learn and grow, not feeling cared about and a disconnect with the organization’s mission or purpose, said Jim Harter, Gallup's chief scientist for workplace management.
"Many quiet quitters fit Gallup’s definition of being 'not engaged' at work — people who do the minimum required and are psychologically detached from their job," Harter wrote. "This describes half of the U.S. workforce."
