"Quiet quitting": A revolution in how we work or the end of working hard?

There's a new term for clocking in and doing the bare minimum at work: "quiet quitting." The phrase is percolating through career sites like LinkedIn, where some job coaches and executives are cautioning against the practice, and on TikTok, where workers are going viral by explaining why they're jumping on the quiet-quitting bandwagon. 

What everyone can agree on is that the term doesn't mean that an employee has quit, but rather that they are setting boundaries at work and refusing to go above and beyond in completing their duties. 

The emergence of the quiet-quitting phenomenon isn't a fluke, experts say. It is partly a byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of workers lost their jobs as the disease shuttered the economy. Although most have found new jobs or been rehired, the nation's workforce remains smaller than prior to the health crisis. That is putting more strain on existing employees, who are often asked to do more for the same pay.