I can certainly see this as a contributing factor.

My own experience is that during the first year of the pandemic I was just cooling my heels in a stable position. Later, the prime factor for me moving on was the whole return to office narrative. I've embraced fully remote and now demand it.

As such, I found a new job in Q4 and moved on, for a 25% pay increase as well.

Yup. I was working in recruiting during the early part of the pandemic, and it felt stupid reaching out to people. Even if you hated your job were you going to leave and take the chance on a new company? Who knows what could go wrong and next thing you know you don't have healthcare or unemployment during a global pandemic.

But I bet everyone who hated their job before, and then suffered through who knows what god awful shit during the pandemic, starting looking as soon as they felt it was more safe.

This is exactly it. The so-called "great resignation" is just pent-up delayed demand for normal job switching that didn't happen during the pandemic.

It's framed this way as click-bait. Of course people click on stories about quitting work because they dream of doing that themselves.

>I suspect a lot of people were afraid to move on to new opportunities for a while due to the uncertainty of the pandemic. Once enough confidence was restored, the job hopping we'd expect to play out over the course of a couple of years all happened in a few months.

yep that's me. I wanted to quit over a year ago but I kept putting it off due to pandemic circumstances.

but now that everyone sees omicron is a wet fart and things are going back to normal, I put in my notice yesterday.