More Than Half a Million Health Care Workers Quit Their Jobs in August | Hacker News Reader

More Than Half a Million Health Care Workers Quit Their Jobs in August

newsweek.com

45 pointsjohntfella75 comments

Anecdotally, places like /r/nursing are full of stories of traveling positions (out-of-state temp work) offering as much as $10k/week for qualified personnel. If you're already unhappy with your job and management, and pulling say $70k annually for 80-hour weeks and 36-hour shifts, that has to be tempting. Even half that rate would be worth it for a lot of people. Texas, for example, is trying to stop people from doing this in-state[0].

[0] https://nurse.org/articles/texas-bans-nurses-from-in-state-c...

I thought Texas was the state of "freedom"? And now they are actively preventing the free market?

Lol. Texas is the state of freedom for only a select group.

Remember the argument how businesses were “private property” and could refuse service? Fair enough, I’ll go along with that. Except now, private businesses are not allowed to set rules on immunization.

Texas is the opposite of free market, just look at its recent energy crisis.

> About 534,000 health care workers quit their jobs in August, up from about 404,000 during the same month in 2020.

This article would be much better with a chart of per capita monthly attrition of health care workers going back years before the pandemic, otherwise it's hard to know how significant it actually is.

And what does quitting even mean here? The vast majority are probably simply changing employers, not leaving the industry. And of course mobility for all industries is higher in 2021 than 2020.

This article is useless clickbait sensationalist trash with zero actual data.

"And what does quitting even mean here?"

It means nothing. We have a specialized nurse in our family. He can get a job at anytime anywhere in the US. One phone call, hired. He will quit a job because the break room doesn't have enough light OR he just wants a month off. He often will go back to a hospital he quit four times: re-hired that day.

While we’re doing anecdotes, my wife quit her full time job to take a part time gig making care plans for a retirement center (office work). This is because she couldn’t deal with the patient load and stress from family members. This was pre-COVID. The job is bad enough without a pandemic.

And how many are completely leaving the healthcare field vs changing jobs in the same field?

You'll want to partition this data again into movements into direct patient vs non-patient care. There are lots of positions which are in the the field of healthcare, require an RN, but involve no direct patient care.

“The poll showed the exodus is primarily driven by the pandemic, insufficient pay or opportunities, and burnout, according to Morning Consult.”

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/18-of-health...

Publications seem to be oblivious to the fact that they are read by an international audience. I was almost ready to google "Newsweek" to find out from which english-speaking country this is coming when I found a hint that cued me in that the article ist concerned with the situation in America, not Canada or Australia or GB or Ireland or something.

Conveniently, at the very top of the article, just above the headline (on desktop, not sure about mobile), it gives a category for the article: "U.S.".

Oh well, I actually missed that so I guess that one is on me.

Having said that, you have to admit that's not always the case and it's easy to miss after being nagged with cookie popups and newsletters and whatnot.

How many of those were let go because they didn't want to be forced into getting vaccinated?

> Tuesday's report showed that hiring slowed in August, while the number of jobs available fell to 10.4 million, from a record high of 11.1 million in July. The largest decreases in job openings were in health care and social assistance (-224,000); accommodation and food services (-178,000); and state and local government education (-124,000).

> The date on quits is likely too early to show the impact of vaccine mandates. It wasn't until mid-September that President Joe Biden on Thursday announced sweeping new federal vaccine requirements for as many as 100 million Americans — private-sector employees as well as health care workers and federal contractors.

I'm not sure why you're down voted for asking this. 10 nurses at my partner's job quit rather than get vaccinated. They also replaced all 10 very quickly with vaccinated nurses and gave everyone raises.

Because the question is rhetorical and meant to imply that vaccination mandates are the cause of the shortage.

I disagree, obviously if you ask a question you imply the answer might be true. If you want to know whether the mandate is the cause, you need to be able to ask the question.

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