New research has revealed that the UK is a world leader when it comes to searching about ‘quiet quitting’ as the phenomenon grips the globe.

A new report from digital intelligence provider, Similarweb, has investigated the ‘quiet quitting’ revolution that first appeared on the internet in articles in March 2022. The term refers to the trend of employees doing the bare minimum at a job, rather than working extra hard and doing more than is asked of them.

Similarweb data shows that interest in ‘quiet quitting’ and related search terms (‘what is quiet quitting’, ‘quiet quitting job’ ‘quietly quitting’ and ‘quiet quitting meaning’) has skyrocketed, rising 3,334% globally in August compared July, reaching 1.2 million web searches.

When broken down country by country, the UK made up 11.8% of ‘quiet quitting’ searches, the second highest of any nation. This was well behind the United States, which made up a massive 40.9% of searches, and just ahead of Germany, which was third in the list at 9.5%.

However it’s not just ‘quiet quitting’ searches that have been on the rise. The report also revealed there has been an increase in searches for “quiet firing”, which refers to employers side-lining unproductive or problematic workers by denying them raises, promotions or challenging assignments, instead of firing them, in hopes they will quit on their own.

In August there were 16.3k searches for ‘quiet firing’, versus virtually none the month prior. While it is still very small in its overall presence on the internet, the report’s author Jim Corridore, believes it is clearly a response to “quiet quitting” trends.