Pandemic’s upending of B.C. workforce helped put employees in driver’s seat

November 15, 2021

Tending bar at the Colony Bar on Granville street was a stable job for Vancouverite Maggie DeVito, until it wasn’t.

“Once you’re in for a long enough time, you kind of know what shifts you’re getting and what you’re going to be making,” said DeVito, an eight-year veteran of the hospitality sector. “So, it was, like, quite a blindside to me when everything got shut down” in March 2020, she said.

“It wasn’t an industry that I had ever imagined that was going to happen to.”

Now, in the COVID-19 pandemic’s upending of the workforce, DeVito is among those who have left a less-secure job with better prospects in other fields — web development in her case — which is putting a strain on employers now, and not just in hospitality.

In some circles, this trend is referred to as the “great resignation.” That suggests workers are quitting jobs they dislike in droves seeking better security and better conditions.

Source: Vancouver Sun