No, Workers Aren’t Striking Because of Vaccine Mandates
The ongoing strike wave in the US has little to do with vaccine mandates. Workers are striking because the labor market is relatively tight — and they smartly see that they have leverage against employers.
Workers hold signs during a strike outside the John Deere Regional Parts Distribution facility in McDonough, Georgia. (Elijah Nouvelage / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
There’s a meme traveling around conservative media that vaccine mandates are the cause of the ongoing strike wave. Although you certainly can find news stories here and there about someone quitting due to a vaccine mandate or a small-scale labor protest (such as a slowdown or sickout) due to the vaccine mandate, it is clearly not the case that opposition to the vaccine mandate is driving the much bigger labor market developments.
The real driver is labor market tightness.
Quits
Quit rates and levels tend to move in lockstep with the level of labor market tightness. When the labor market is loose, meaning there are a lot of jobseekers per job opening, such as after a recession, quitting declines. When the labor market is tight, meaning there are not very many jobseekers per job opening, quitting increases.
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