Kiki
- A Bay Area millennial quit her full-time job in 2021 after experiencing what she describes as extreme burnout.
- She's among the growing number of Americans opting for part-time roles.
- Not everyone can afford to do so, however, and not all the reasons for the shift are worth celebrating.
In November of 2021, Kiki, a Bay Area-based millennial, realized she had to stop working full-time.
While she said she was earning roughly $100,000 per year, her job — a corporate manager position at a pension and health benefits administrator — had left her "completely burnt out," the 33-year-old told Insider.
The trouble started in 2020, when Kiki's job was deemed "essential," forcing her to come into the office a few days a week even though she didn't feel safe doing so. Then her company became significantly understaffed, which she said meant "more work for everyone."
She says she regularly came back from lunch breaks with over 100 new emails. When she took a week-and-a-half off to get married, she returned to an inbox "in the thousands."
"I would cry in the car the entire commute to the office because I was just so overwhelmed and scared," she said, adding that she was "terrified of making mistakes."
One day, she and her husband decided that she needed to quit for her mental health.
"I busted my butt to keep up since I first started, and by the time I left I just couldn't keep up anymore. It wasn't sustainable," she said.
While Kiki took a break from the workforce, she planned to find another job within six months — by May of 2022 — because her household needed the extra income. When the time came, the couple decided it was best for her to pursue part-time roles, in the hopes this would help her avoid another round of burnout.
"I try not to think about a time where I may have to work full time again," she said. "I think I'm still a bit traumatized."
In April, she found a job — a 15- to 20-hours-per-week, fully remote customer service position that lets her schedule her own hours. She says she's getting paid the minimum wage for her area — $16.50 per hour.
While she's earning "way less" than she did when working full-time, and this has made things challenging financially, her burnout has "significantly improved," and she knows she made the right choice.
"It saved my life," she said, adding that, "I no longer feel like a shell of a human with my butt glued to a chair for 8+ hours a day."
There's no shortage of full-time jobs in the US, but Kiki is among the millions of workers who have decided part-time is a better fit for them. As of January, 22.1 million Americans were working part-time voluntarily, according to Labor Department data. That's nearly six times the number — 4.1 million — who were part-time but wanted a full-time gig. This marked the highest ratio of voluntary to involuntary part-time employment in two decades, per The Wall Street Journal.
In part, this data speaks to the strong US labor market, but it's not entirely worth celebrating. That's because for many Americans, it's not the job market that's preventing them from pursuing full-time gigs: It's health issues, childcare responsibilities, and burnout. One third of women took time off from work due to their mental health last year, according to a Deloitte study of 5,000 women across the globe.
Some, like Kiki, would rather not work at all, but are being pulled into the workforce to help their families make ends meet amid a period of high inflation and cost of living.
"I constantly fear that we won't be able to pay our bills"
Kiki knows she's privileged, and that many people have no choice but to keep working full-time for financial reasons. She say her husband works in finance and earns enough to help them get by, but that to stay afloat, they had to take out a personal loan, "heavily dip" into savings accounts, and rack up a lot of credit card debt.
They also started budgeting more, which is among the reasons they've cut back on things like "Amazon impulse purchases" and takeout dinners.
"I constantly fear that we won't be able to pay our bills or we will go into more debt, all because I'm not able to work like I used to," she said.
Kiki has over 9,000 TikTok followers, where she posts comedic content whenever she's "feeling creative," but doesn't make any money from social media. She's tried earning extra income through Poshmark, Redbubble, and an Amazon storefront but hasn't had much success.
She says she and her husband's goal is for her to not work at all unless she wants to. But given they live in the Bay Area, among the most expensive regions of the country, she says this "seems unattainable," and she worries she'll have to increase her hours again someday.
For now, Kiki says she's "extremely lucky" she was able to find the role she did. After feeling disappointed by the quality of part-time options when scrolling through job sites, a friend referred her to the company she's working for now.
"I would never encourage anyone to quit if they weren't sure they had a secure support system to help you emotionally and financially," she said. "I wish we could all work as little or as much as we desired and still make ends meet, but that is simply not the reality we are in."