Summary
The Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA) today issued a report with the purpose of determining whether the City of Philadelphia’s workforce was affected by The Great Resignation, a period of voluntary employee separations during the COVID19 Pandemic. PICA analyzed employment separation data from the City’s Office of Human Resources for calendar years 2017 through 2021. PICA’s analyses revealed that the City experienced a marked increase in employee separations during the Pandemic, going from a pre-pandemic average of 6.4 percent to 11.0 percent in 2021. Specifically, PICA’s analyses revealed that: • In 2021, out of approximately 26,733 employees, 2,933 separated from the City, representing 11.0 percent of the workforce, an increase from the pre-pandemic (20172019) average of 6.4 percent. • The year over year percentage change for separations averaged 14.8 percent prior to the pandemic and dropped to only 2.8 percent during the height of the pandemic (in 2020) and jumped to 38.7 percent in 2021. • The largest separation category was resignations, which reached 1,364, an increase from 881 (54.8 percent) in 2019, and 686 (98.8 percent) in 2020. • The second largest separation category, retirements, reached 995 in 2021, an increase of 134, or 15.6 percent over 2020. Prior to the pandemic, the average number of retirements was approximately 614 from 2017 through 2019. • The highest number of resignations in 2021 were attributed to Millennials, amongst which resignations soared to 877, a 91.9 percent increase from 2020, followed by Generation X. However, since all generational groups had a marked increase in the number of resignations in 2021, it appears that age did not factor into the decision to resign.