There are lots of workers leaving lots of jobs these days, a terrible trend that shows no signs of slowing up, given the terrible state of our economy. I’m not surprised by much of anything I see when it comes to layoffs and departing workers, and that’s why this story last week in The Washington Post just seemed to confirm something most every manager and executive knows about employees when they walk out the door.

When workers leave, they take things with them. And often, what they take are things that rightly belong to their company.

“Nearly 60 percent of employees who quit a job or are asked to leave are stealing company data, according to a report by the Ponemon Institute, a Tucson-based research group,” said the Post story.  The survey was based on interviews with 945 adults who were laid off, fired or changed jobs in the last year.”

Sounds bad, right? Well, it gets worse. “Seventy-nine percent of those who admitted to taking data said they did so despite knowing that their former employer did not permit them to take internal company information,” the Post story added. “Sixty-five percent of those who took data from their former employer grabbed e-mail lists. The next most frequently stolen data included non-financial business information (45 percent), customer contact lists (39 percent), employee records (35 percent) and financial information (16 percent).”

It’s a longstanding worker tradition to stick it to the organization that just got rid of you by taking something you shouldn’t. Anyone who has managed for any length of time has seen it happen. It’s not surprising that it seems to be happening more now, with so many people losing their jobs, but it was an issue even back during much better times.

Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute, told The Washington Post that there are a number of factors that contribute to the cavalier attitude so many workers have toward data theft, including telecommuting and a lack of employee loyalty.

“What’s interesting is more and more people seem to feel entitled to information they create on the job, and an increase in mobility in the workforce means many employees don’t have a lasting relationship with their employers,” Ponemon told the newspaper. “Also, as you have more employees working from remote locations and on home computers, the concept of who really controls this data isn’t often clear to people.”

His last point—that it is not always clear who controls the data—isn’t a new issue. I know many former co-workers who walked out of a job with materials that they thought they were entitled to, and I saw it 20 years ago when people weren’t working on home computers from remote locations.

But in today’s world where so many employers are “cavalier” toward the people who work for them, sticking it to the company that just tossed you aside is one of those going-out-the-door traditions that is undoubtedly spreading in an economy that is shedding millions of jobs in a short period of time. This a trend that even Dilbert touched on this week.

Taking something that doesn’t belong to you is never right, but when people lose their jobs and livelihoods, they don’t always act rationally. They take things with them that may help them get their next job. They view the information they take as a “benefit” to them. Even if it’s highly illegal to you.

Get my latest blog updates and workforce management news by following me on Twitter.