The study found that American workers with the lowest salaries are the ones who tend to quit their formal jobs to explore how to acquire cryptocurrency earnings. They argue that crypto gave them financial freedom.
One of the possible elements behind the current complex job crisis in the United States could be cryptocurrencies.
According to a recent study by Civic Science, some members of the North American workforce are choosing to leave their jobs after making a profit from investing in digital currencies.
The research, which applied surveys to at least 6,741 people over the age of 18, found that 4% of workers quit their job for having found “financial freedom” with crypto. The survey got conducted in mid-October.
This figure is even higher if you count those citizens who claimed to know someone who has left their formal job due to investment in digital assets.
Eleven percent of the general population reported personally quitting their jobs to place their investments in cryptocurrency.
They quit their formal job for Bitcoin
Civic did not provide additional data or information on the level of cryptocurrency earnings of the respondents or what is meant by financial freedom. However, other findings from the firm bring further clarity about the group that has chosen to leave their jobs due to cryptocurrencies.
Crossing data from the October survey with a previous one of 1,201 people, the researchers reported that many of those who quit their jobs due to their investments in digital assets are workers in the income bracket. Lower.
As such, 64% of study participants who claimed to have quit their jobs for crypto earnings earn less than $ 50,000 a year. Of this percentage, 27% said they earned less than $ 25,000, while 37% had a total annual income of between $ 25,000 and $ 50,000. Those percentages are gradually decaying among the population with higher incomes.
Likewise, the responses from the group that said they knew someone who had quit their job due to investing in digital currencies also coincided with this proportion. Of those, 55% indicated that their acquaintance earns less than USD 50,000 annually.
In this regard, Civic notes that the data could highlight that cryptocurrency investments may have provided life-changing incomes for some workers. Meanwhile, for the wealthiest workforce, cryptocurrencies could represent more of an asset diversification alternative than a source of income.
Mass Unemployment in the US
This study is the result of the disruption that the economy experienced during the COVID-19 outbreak. Despite health recovery and reintegration to face-to-face working conditions, there is still a severe labor shortage in the United States of America.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, an unprecedented 2.9% of the entire workforce has quit their jobs in recent months.
A Bloomberg report that interviewed ten unemployed citizens found that the majority refuse to return to their formal job mainly due to low wages, which they allege are lower than they received before the pandemic and unfavorable working conditions, such as the lack of sanitary measures and protections. However, that report also matches the Civic study.
By: Jenson Nuñez
