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The wage increase comes as several museum employees said the morale of some guards had sunk because they felt worn out and undervalued while working in often difficult circumstances.

The Met’s main building on Fifth Avenue is now served by a staff of some 300 full-time guards versus the 404 that had been assigned there before the pandemic

Under the new wage agreement, existing guards who were being paid $15.51 an hour were given raises and are now being paid $17 an hour. District Council 37 said that average pay among guards at the museum was around $20 an hour.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on people who left their jobs shows that people working in transportation and manufacturing quit at a lower rate than people working in professional and business services, and below the overall private industry average. Among industries with lower wages, hospitality did see a high level of resignation and job changes, though the industry typically has very high turnover (up to 70% to 80% yearly).

Nikolaidis’s research shows that some of the strongest determinants of lower mood after covid-19 were external social circumstances, including income or economic distress, as well as the person’s mental and socioeconomic conditions prior to the pandemic. People working in low-wage and hourly jobs have long expressed significant stress associated to their work, and their burnout epidemic arguably pre-dates covid-19.

The US administration seems aware of the looming crisis, and has proposed a mental health strategy with an overall budget of about $1 billion for 2023, to provide mental health services, recruit a mental health workforce, provide support to frontline health workers, and strengthen the role of community behavioral health clinics.