3 Stocks to Buy as 'The Great Resignation' Steams Ahead

With workers still quitting their jobs in record numbers, you might be hunting for the best stocks to buy amid the changing business landscape. In this segment of Backstage Pass, recorded on Nov. 12, Fool.com contributors Rachel Warren, Jon Quast, and Toby Bordelon each name their top stock to buy to capitalize on the new remote work movement and ongoing uncertainty plaguing the hiring market. 

Rachel Warren: I think if you want to invest in a really good company amid this uncertainty, one great company to consider is Etsy (ETSY -0.86%). I love Etsy, I am a share-owner in Etsy. I actually was just checking the chart, it looks like Etsy was up like 7% today. [laughs]

Jon Quast: It boomed today for no reason.

Warren: For no reason whatsoever but I mean, I was happy. Got a little notification on Robinhood (HOOD -2.63%). This is a stock that I think obviously, attracts a lot of investor interest during the pandemic. I think it's one that some investors were perhaps, concerned might retract a bit with the world reopening.

But it is, again, one of those companies that I think is continuing to prove its staying power even as we're in a very fluctuating time with the pandemic. During the first nine months of this year, the company increased its revenue by more than 45% from the same period in 2020, its net income rose by more than 65% compared to the first nine months of 2020.

Essentially, these huge mid-to-upper, double-digit percentage growth figures compared to the height of the pandemic, and Etsy is continuing to deliver. It had these recent really major acquisitions of Depop, the Etsy of Brazil, Elo7.

I think that this is a really great one to consider. I think also, if you want to play a little bit into this change, 'The Great Resignation', you have a lot of independent sellers on Etsy. Maybe this is their second job or maybe their side hustle turning it into their full-time job. I think Etsy is a really great company to consider. Solid business, fast-growing, great balance sheet, and shares I think are really catching up as well.

Quast: Yeah, Rachel. When you look at Etsy's business on the active seller side, they've added quite a few here in the most recent quarters. I think that that does speak to maybe some people are side-hustling a little bit more on the platform.

Long-term, that is very good for Etsy because what it does is it expands its product catalog immensely and if there's more products there for sale, hey, that is a lot more enticing for people like you and me who are looking for things to buy.

For my company here, I've been talking about 'The Great Resignation' since June, when it first landed on my radar, and it really made a lot of sense that as you come out of a very trying time, a very trying pandemic where you even possibly question your own mortality, to start wondering what is it that I want to do with my life and where do I want to do it and who do I want to do it with? All of these existential questions, all of a sudden, rise to surface and you have more time to think about them.

I think that people are thinking very deeply about what they want to do and where they want to do it, and they are making changes accordingly, they're taking action. To me, one company that really benefits from this, this is something I talked about in an article in June, I'll drop the link in the Slido, but one company I do want to highlight here is Zoom (ZM -0.82%).

If you look at Zoom, there's a couple of reasons that I think that it really plays good into this great resignation trend. First of all, it is a great workplace. As people are thinking about where do I want to work, I think that Zoom is going to see a whole lot less attrition in their workforce than other companies would because if you go to Glassdoor, very high approval ratings of the company, very high approval ratings of the CEO.

This really speaks to a place that people want to work. If you look at their open jobs right now, they are in high-growth mode. Hiring almost 500 people right now. There's 500 job openings, you can go to their career page.

Many of these are remote jobs. Not only is this a great company to work for that has a possibility of attracting top talent, but you get to attract them from all over the world. I really think that that bodes well for Zoom. They're going to get of these people in 'The Great Resignation', those participating, they stand to attract the very top talent across the world.

I will share just one thing here. When you have the top people working for you, [laughs] that bodes very well for your business long-term. Then when you look at the stock from a valuation perspective, never been cheaper.

I mean, I don't know if I want to call it cheap [laughs] per se. I think Toby might have something to say there. But this is still 21 times sales. But I will say that Zoom stock has never been cheaper and still a lot of opportunity for growth ahead. That's how I'm thinking about the great resignation.

Toby Bordelon: Thank you, Jon. Thank, both of you. Good thoughts and both good companies to consider. We got a couple of comments in Slido chat on this issue. For some guy talks maybe the negative sentiments, or renters, you've got to start paying your rents again. Are young people going to pay student loans again next year. That could happen too, right? We've had a lot of delays of bills being due for various reasons.

That comes as a shock to the monthly budget. Maybe there's some of that going on. Macedonian says, I'm a recruitment professional, people are quitting their jobs to go to higher paying jobs, not staying unemployed, a way of getting a raise.

I think it's definitely all that going on too. I think what we're seeing is people being confident enough in the job market to say, I don't actually have to have one lined up right now. I can just say I'm out and I can go get another one. That seem pretty good.

I think you're seeing more of that, right? You're seeing more of a quit first, go to a new job second, or even finding new job second, suggesting confidence, right? Which is why this doesn't make much sense to me, because the consumer sentiment is low, right? But it could be different parts of the economy.

If people who are concerned about inflation on the spending side where they recognize the opportunity, on the job side and it's going to take a while for those things to come back and sync together perhaps is what's going on. For a company for the time of uncertainty, I got to go with Berkshire (BRK.A 1.18%) (BRK.B 1.30%). I don't think it's going anywhere. You're not going to make a ton of money off of it. It's not going to 10X in five years.

But solid company, I'd also say makes your portfolios the way you want it to be, have a healthy amount of cash perhaps, or make sure you don't need to draw from that portfolio for a while. Whatever happens, you'll be all right. Whenever I see times of uncertainty, it's always a chance for me to say, does my portfolio makes sense right now? Is there any change that I want to make? Am I comfortable going forward with this? It's just a time to reassess and maybe some people can do that.