By Rahkim Sabree | Forbes

When headlines introduce new workplace trends, they often capture our attention because they name something many people have long felt but struggled to articulate.

The Great Resignation, characterized by workers’ abrupt departure from their places of employment that peaked during the pandemic, and quiet quitting, the silent disengagement employees felt when overworked and undervalued, are well-known examples.

Now, another phrase has entered the conversation: “quiet cracking.” It’s forced me to reflect on the conditions that lead so many employees to engage in either a flee response by quitting or a fight response by staying and struggling silently.

Unlike quiet quitting, which was framed as a conscious choice or act of resistance, quiet cracking captures the experience of employees who feel stuck in their jobs but can’t leave. They push forward despite exhaustion, stress, and even panic attacks because the alternative feels riskier. They’re engaged in a form of economic struggle that can be described as workplace financial trauma—one of the six sources of financial trauma I introduce in my forthcoming book Overcoming Financial Trauma. It’s the invisible thread tying dissatisfaction, stress, and survival-mode behavior to the reality of needing a paycheck.

What Is Workplace Financial Trauma

Financial trauma is any instance observed or experienced that has a negative impact on the way someone views, interacts with, or believes about money.

Workplace financial trauma can be described as the harm caused by repeated exposure to financially exploitative, inequitable, or hostile workplace conditions that cause someone to engage in survival-based behaviors in order to secure a paycheck. This includes:

• Chronic underpayment or wage stagnation despite rising responsibilities.
• Economic instability tied to layoffs, restructurings, or gig contracts.
• Lack of access to benefits like healthcare or paid leave that make quitting unsafe.
• Toxic management or discriminatory cultures that employees endure because their financial obligations outweigh their options.

For millions of workers, leaving a job isn’t as simple as handing in a resignation letter. Debt, caregiving responsibilities, and rising costs of living turn the workplace into both a source of harm and the very thing that sustains survival. That duality of being harmed by and dependent on the same system sits at the core of workplace financial trauma.

Economic Warfare in the Workplace

The term economic warfare might sound dramatic, but for many employees, it’s a reality. Workplaces often weaponize financial dependency to control behavior.

• Scarcity threats: Subtle reminders of job insecurity—“You’re lucky to have this job”—keep employees silent about unfair treatment.
• Control mechanisms: Promotions withheld, schedules manipulated, or workloads increased under the guise of “tight budgets.”
• Exploitation masked as efficiency: Leaner teams taking on double the work, all while leadership frames it as an opportunity to step up either as “other duties as assigned” or under the guise of “stretch assignments.”

This creates a battlefield where employees are expected to sacrifice well-being for financial stability. The paycheck becomes both carrot and stick, fostering compliance even in environments that are toxic or misaligned. This is further compounded by systemic factors that include racism, sexism, ageism, or xenophobia that force employees to engage in a practice of code switching for safety.

The toll isn’t just professional, it’s deeply personal. Workers internalize powerlessness, hyper vigilance, and anxiety. Over time, these responses hardwire into trauma, manifesting as burnout, disengagement, or quiet cracking. These often fall under your traditional fawning response as individuals seek to lock in their source of safety through their finances and can manifest in a variety of ways.

Quiet Cracking as a Trauma Response

According to an article in Business Insider, quiet cracking describes the silent struggle of feeling dissatisfied at work and unable to leave. The behaviors described in quiet cracking are not new. They mirror the coping strategies of people navigating workplace financial trauma:

• Fatigue and hyperfixation: Constantly reliving workplace conflicts, unable to mentally switch off.
• Emotional withdrawal: Smiling at coworkers while crying on the commute.
• Maladaptive coping: Overeating, stress snacking, or numbing behaviors.
• Performance decline: Not from laziness, but from being in perpetual fight-or-flight mode.

For employees experiencing workplace financial trauma, quiet cracking isn’t just dissatisfaction—it’s a survival strategy. The body absorbs the stress of economic insecurity while the mind calculates what walking away might cost.

In early 2021, I remember feeling all of the symptoms listed above, complete with the physical manifestation of stress via increased blood pressure and the appearance of rashes on my body. In May of that year, I submitted my resignation effective immediately and took to X (formerly Twitter) and tweeted about my resignation.

The response? A resounding acknowledgement in what would become my most viral post to date — 2.2 million impressions of mostly people acknowledging how they related to the experience and either had done, or wished they could do the same.

At the time, I did not have the vocabulary to describe workplace financial trauma, but the experience certainly led to the development of, and my understanding of it. While ultimately, my stress response resulted in fleeing, many people are not afforded the same privilege, which is the foundation of this new term, quiet cracking. It’s the inability to fight back.

The Cost of Survival

The financial trauma that fuels quiet cracking carries costs far beyond the individual. For employees, it looks like burnout, mental health crises, loss of confidence, and feelings of entrapment.

For employers, it can show up as workers showing up physically but being disengaged mentally, which drains productivity. Retention suffers as employees silently endure for years before leaving abruptly.

For society, these cycles reinforce economic inequality, normalizes toxic work cultures, and perpetuates the myth that suffering is simply part of professional life. Declining satisfaction is not just a matter of workplace culture, it’s an indicator of unaddressed workplace financial trauma on a mass scale. However, with the rise in artificial intelligence, employees and employers alike are keenly aware of the changing landscape and the outsourcing of traditional roles. Microsoft recently released a study showing the 40 jobs most at risk by AI. This creates an added layer of tension for employees silently enduring as their future employment may be in question during a time they may not be positioned to endure joblessness or invest in upskilling.

Breaking the Cycle

The good news: both employees and employers can disrupt the cycle of workplace financial trauma and quiet cracking. Investing in workplace wellness programs with an added focus on trauma-informed financial and career counselors is just one example. Others include:

For individuals

• Label the trauma: Recognizing that financial stress isn’t just stress but can be the result of workplace financial trauma helps reframe the experience and open pathways for healing.
• Seek support: Financial therapy and financial counseling can offer individual and peer support that can help break cycles of shame and isolation.
• Build an exit strategy: Even if leaving feels impossible today, creating a timeline and plan can restore agency. This can include an audit and inventory of skillsets and an opportunity to skill up appropriately. The writing isn’t just on the wall; it’s in your face. The world of work is shifting quickly, and you need to be proactive in getting ahead of it.

For employers

• Acknowledge financial trauma: Recognize that money stress impacts performance as much as workload and that company culture often contributes to that.
• Provide trauma-informed programs: Financial wellness benefits, counseling, and flexible policies that support stability.
• Prioritize dignity over output: A culture that values human well-being creates sustainable engagement.

For society

• Reframe labor narratives: Instead of labeling disengaged employees as lazy, recognize the role of trauma. Capitalism rewards workaholism, which can reinforce financial harm. Rest is a requirement, not a reward.
• Push for systemic solutions: Healthcare access, fair wages, and worker protections can lessen the financial risks of leaving toxic jobs.

From Quiet Cracking to Empowerment

Quiet cracking may be the newest buzzword, but it reflects an old truth: when workplaces exploit financial dependency, trauma is the inevitable outcome. Employees don’t quietly crack because they lack resilience. They crack because the cost of survival in a financially hostile environment eventually exceeds their coping capacity.

Addressing this reality requires more than better engagement strategies or motivational slogans. It requires understanding the deeper role of financial trauma, especially workplace financial trauma, and acknowledging the human cost of economic warfare at work.