After the Great Resignation

This story is a month old now, but Stuff served it up to me again, and I didn’t write about it earlier. The headline is Workers are discovering the ‘Great Regret’ of quitting their jobs, and the key data-based line is

In the United States, a survey of more than 15,000 workers by job-search platform Joblist found 26 percent of workers who quit during the Great Resignation regret their decision.

I’ve edited that quote so that the link works, which it doesn’t on Stuff or newsroom. If you follow the link, you find that is basically what Joblist says in its writeup of the survey.  If you are naturally suspicious or nerdy enough to read the Methodology section at the bottom of the page, though, it looks a bit different

We surveyed 628 job seekers who quit their previous job about why they quit and whether they regret their decision.

So, the 26% is of 628 people, not more than 15,000.  More specifically, it’s 628 job-seekers. The target population doesn’t appear to include people who already had a new job or who weren’t looking for one — two groups that you’d expect to have fewer regrets.

The Methodology section doesn’t say how they chose the people to survey, though it does say This data has not been weighted, and it comes with some limitations. At best, that suggests a survey with no attempt to compensate for non-response. At worst, it could be a bogus self-selected straw poll.