#Why so many Americans feel empowered to walk away from work

Quitters never win . . . unless, maybe, you’re leaving your job in search of a better way of living and working. 

According to US Burea of Labor statistics, nearly four million Americans voluntarily left jobs in June alone. Anthony Klotz, Associate Professor of Management in Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, has dubbed the phenomenon the Great Resignation — a phrase that went viral when he first used it in an interview with Bloomberg this past spring. 

Klotz said the trend is due to four factors, all related to our changing pandemic world. One is a course correction: There was a backlog of resignations because fewer people left jobs in 2020 due to economic uncertainty. Some just don’t want to go back to the office after working from home. There’s also burnout — and the realization for many “quitters” that they don’t have to be chained to a desk or working around the clock. 

“The pandemic, and the lockdown associated with it, caused people to reflect on their lives and in many cases gave them the time and motivation to make a change,” Klotz told The Post. 

Here, meet five people who upended their careers to improve their lives:

Walked away from TV for a better work-life balance 

Jenna Liu was a successful account executive for Fox 5 in Washington, DC, when the mother-of-one launched Sixx Cool Mom in March 2020. Initially, it was a side hustle: a parenting network that grew out of a Facebook group she’d started in late 2019. 

But with so many people stuck at home during COVID lockdowns, the business took off. By August 2020, Sixx Cool Moms had 20,000 members and 16 chapters, each run by an independent contractor who helped sell local ads. It’s now up to 34 chapters in 13 sates. 

“We blew up significantly faster than I was prepared for. I wasn’t prepared to leave my full-time job at that time,” said Liu, who is based in Germantown, Md. “I was earning six figures, I had really good benefits and, frankly, I loved what I did.” 

But she also had a young child and found it impossible to balance motherhood and two full-time jobs. Something had to give. 

Liu left her Fox job in the fall to focus on Sixx Cool Moms. “It was a steep learning curve, but I wake up every morning and love what I do,” Liu said. She’s making roughly half of what she did as an account executive with a decade of experience, but sees opportunities for growth. 

Plus, she said, “It’s surprising how much money I have saved not commuting to work or buying business casual clothes from Ann Taylor Loft.” 

Her flexible schedule also means more time with her daughter, who will be 2 at the end of September. Liu’s now able to drop off and pick up the toddler from daycare, something that wasn’t possible with her old schedule. Liu estimated that she still works 50 or 60 hours a week, but said, “It doesn’t feel like it because it’s so integrated into my daily life.”

Walked away from retail and restaurant work for more money 

After just a few months of being self-employed — building Web sites for small businesses and influencers — Amber LaVine says she can’t imagine ever going back to being a wage slave for someone else. 

“I wish I would have realized it 20 years ago,” said the 37-year-old LaVine, now dividing her time between family homes in the Adirondacks and the town of Marcellus, near Syracuse. 

At the beginning of 2020, she was living in Morocco with her fiancé and teaching English but had to return to the US because of COVID that August. She initially headed to Tampa, Fla., where she’d lived before, and found hourly work: first at Target and then a counter-service chain restaurant called Crispers. By last spring, she’d had it with the latter. 

“It paid $5.54 an hour [Florida minimum wage for tipped servers], and people don’t tip like at a normal restaurant,” she said. So, she started doing web design, a skill she’d picked up over the years, on the side. Last June, she quit Crispers to focus on her new endeavor full time and move closer to her family in New York. 

At first, she was able to make about $3,500 per month, but anticipates making $50,000 by year’s end. Her business expenses are next-to-nothing, and, financially, it’s a big improvement over her old jobs. Plus, she’s loving having more control of her life. 

“I don’t have to worry if I’m getting enough hours. I can make my own. I price out my packages, I price out each project, so I know I’m getting that money,” she said. 

She finds clients via LinkedIn and social media, and has joined an online community for women coders called GeekPack. “It gives you that team to lean on, without having your own team,” she said. “If you have a particularly stressful client, you can say, ‘Hey, has anyone else dealt with this?’ ” 

When it’s safe to return to Morocco, she’ll keep doing the same work from abroad. To others considering striking out on their own, LaVine said they should go for it — but know it isn’t easy. 

“You can definitely eliminate anxiety and stress,” she said. “But it also takes a lot of hard work.”

Walked away from a fine-dining career for less stress 

For many years, Mark Drew, 41, worked in fine dining at restaurants like the Four Seasons and L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. Now, he can’t fathom going back to that world. 

When the lockdown first started, he was a beverage director at the Tavern by WS, a swank wine bar in Hudson Yards that he’d helped open in the summer of 2019. Drew and roughly 60 other staffers were promptly laid off and he was unemployed for the rest of the year. 

This past March, rather than return to the world of white tablecloths, he jumped on a new opportunity and took a job at the Bronx Brewery as the food and beverage director. The compensation is similar to what he made before, but he’s finding the job much more enjoyable. 

“It’s a lot more rewarding. It’s just more real,” said Drew, who used to live in the East Village and relocated to Peekskill in the fall of 2020. “You actually get to see something being produced from grain and water and yeast.” 

The hours, roughly 50 per week, are much more reasonable than before, when he’d work 75 hours a week to open a new spot. “You are in for every shift, until you get reviewed by a critic,” he recalled. 

The lighter schedule is key, as he and his fiancé welcomed a baby nine weeks ago. 

“It’s still busy, I still work hard, but it’s much, much more forgiving,” Drew said. “Certainly the quality of life I have is much higher.”

Walked away from bartending to pursue a whole new life 

When the pandemic hit, Landon MacKinnon, 24, was living in Buffalo and working at a bar. After it shut down, he went on unemployment for about a year, always anticipating that his boss would eventually call him back to work. 

But before that could happen, MacKinnon visited New York City over the July Fourth weekend and fell in love with the Williamsburg neighborhood. “I knew almost immediately this is where I want to be,” he said. 

He moved to the city a few weeks ago, just as his old boss in Buffalo was texting him to come back to the bar. While the first couple weeks living in Brooklyn had some mishaps — a bedbug scare, getting locked out of his apartment, getting fired while on trial for a Midtown bartending gig — things are starting to come together. 

MacKinnon’s gotten a job at the Whiskey Brookyn and is loving working there. He’s making about the same as in Buffalo, but the potential for tips is much, much greater. After being on unemployment for months and months, he’s thrilled to be back on the job. 

“I’m ready to work 60 hours a week,” he said, noting how his goal is to be able to send money back to his mother, who is raising nine kids alone in Buffalo. “It’s the first time in a really long time that I’m going into work with a smile, and I’m excited to be there.”

Walked away from a nursing job to protect her family 

A nurse for over 35 years, Julie Conboy Russo left her job as an assistant director of nursing at a Long Island long term-care facility — on the advice of her doctor. 

Several patients and staffers at the facility had been infected with COVID, leaving Conboy Russo to fear for the health of herself and her family. 

“I have an immunocompromised husband at home,” said the 60-year-old, whose spouse is undergoing treatment for leukemia. “I’m up there in age. I have comorbidities.” 

Conboy Russo had asked supervisors if she could do some work from her home in Levittown, since a significant portion of the job was administrative, but they wouldn’t accommodate her. It was mutually decided that she should leave this past January. 

Given her age and salary history — for the last decade or so, she’s been making six figures — she knows getting hired again will be challenging. 

“I would love to take care of people,” said Conboy Russo. “But the first person who I have to take care of is me and my family. I’ve watched too many people die.” 

This fall, she’s hoping to teach one day a week at a nursing school, and she’s finishing up the Ph.D that she’s been working on for years. “You’re never too old to learn something new,” she said.