"The Unstoppable Career Wave" - 25 million Employees Set to Redefine Their Futures by 2030

The latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that total nonfarm “Quits” continues to decline from the highs of the post Covid time. The % of employees who are quitting their jobs has stabilized since the period of “The Great Resignation”. Employees are once again staying longer. What we also see are Job openings down to a low of 4.9% because employers are not hiring! It could just be that everything is “rosy in the garden” and employees are happy in their jobs, or it could mean that workers do not see many alternative job opportunities available. Employees stay in their current roles because they fear they won't find another job easily. The problem with the later scenario is that when economic conditions change and employers start hiring there could once again be an avalanche of separations, employees quitting their jobs in favor of better opportunities elsewhere.

But will employers start hiring again in big numbers like in 2022?

If we look at current employment statistics, we see a waterfall effect occurring. Look at the red lines representing annual average employment 2022, 2023 and into 2024 in the chart below. You can see a clear decline in average employment. As I write this article the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has revised the red line downward by an additional 818,000 in 2024. I expect the redline to reduce even further and flatline at a monthly average of $100k through 2025 and beyond, yes beyond! ?

The three red lines also represent a three-year career cycle. What I mean by this is the large numbers of employees hired in early 2022, call this year 1, are now into year 3 of their career cycle, approaching year 4.

Amy Liedke the VP of HR at Lexis Nexus penned an article titled “Career Learning Cycles: The Magic of Year Three”. Amy is an expert in Talent Development and writes about the magic of getting to year 3 in a role. In year 3 the Genie really does come out of the bottle. By year 3 “employees do next level work” Amy writes. They become effective leaders, executioners of high value yielding projects and mentor and coach others.

Everything comes together in year 3. But what happens next? Amy adds the following footnote to her article:

… “If you are not careful, in Year Four you may find yourself shooting ‘finger guns’ in greeting people across the cafeteria. That’s the sign that you are ready for your next challenge!”

If we count 2022 as Year 1 of Amys three-year cycle, you could have many employees in your organization shooting ‘finger guns’ across the cafeteria or before and after Zoom calls. These are the “Year Threes” ready for the next challenge.

Consider now the economic environment, Lower employment growth, Low Hires, Low Separations and Low Quits. Here’s the question?

What are you going to do with the “Year Threes?” because they are not going anywhere in the Low Hires, Low Quits marketplace.

Let’s come back to answering this question and take a detour into some important research from McKinsey.

According to McKinsey research in an article titled: “Generative AI and the future of work in America”, in the Pandemic (2019-22) the US labor market saw 8.8m employees shift their occupation, this was 50% more than the previous 3-years. McKinsey predicts that because of AI and other factors this trend will continue and are forecasting a further 12m occupational shifts in the US market and a further 12m in Europe and 1m in Australia through 2030, that’s over $5m workers per year will shift their careers, pivoting to a completely different career. ?

But, if we have lower average employment growth, especially in the US, where will employees shift careers to? ?

Let’s come back to the “Year Threes” If I am in year 3, where am I going to next if there are fewer jobs? The only two answers are, I think:

1. I leave the labor force altogether (some may, just like in the Pandemic period).
2. I seek career advancement opportunities inside of the company.

This is why, I predict (less a Covid scale event), internal mobility will become the #1 priority for CPO’s. CPO’s must plan for internal mobility needs, career shifting on a level that they have never seen before. The level will be different because the career planning horizon will need to be much longer than CPOs have ever planned for before, we are talking 5-years or even beyond. Why? ?Because marketplace conditions will corner CPOs into this. Consider, low hires, low separations, low quits and the probability of 2m+ career transitioners through 2025-2030.

Here’s another interesting dimension to this. CPOs are working in the gig driven economy and so each career move is likely to be for much shorter tenure, from gig to gig, from fractional role to fractional role. Employees will be like Taylor Swift on her ERAS (poignantly named after the ‘eras’ of her career journey) tour shifting from gig to gig, the only difference being that for employees the stage is most likely to be their home office. This is why CPOs are investing in setting up internal career marketplaces for employees. This is why I expect the best organizations will have thriving career marketplaces enabling employees to shift, pivot and move from role to role, gig to gig, just like Taylor Swift but and this is a big BUT…with much longer planning horizons, yes, 5-years or beyond!

If the era of the Pandemic was known as “The Great Resignation”, the era between now and 2030 will become known as “The Great Career Migration” as millions of Americans and workers around the world shift their careers. This is also why AI is the future defining Tech for CPO’s because it’s the tech that will power career transitioning of large numbers of employees over this longer time horizon. Career transitioning software will act and operate just like CAR Navigation systems, mapping out the route from career move A to B, C and D…but unlike in car GPS the roadmap will need to map for years, not hours.

Employees who are given access to self-service career transitioning tools will be more satisfied and stay highly motivated. These employees can explore and plan their career paths efficiently and because of AI will be able to plan over much longer planning horizons doing “what-if” career pathway planning, rotating inside, then outside (jobs permitting) and back again. ?

But this is not an employee only story…

CPOs don’t want to haphazardly deploy career mobility solutions. What they really want to do is deploy career solutions that guide employees towards the jobs and gigs that have the biggest impact on success of the organization. Amy Zimmerman CPO of Relay Payments in her excellent article titled “Career Growth is rarely a straight line” wrote this:

…“The Winning Move is to prioritize roles that make the most significant contribution to your organization.”

Organizations win because they guide the brightest and best towards the roles and gigs that have the biggest impact on success and the employees win because they feel valued and motivated because they are doing their best work.

But what about everyone else? I’m adding the following footnote to Amy’s article.

…“As CPO’s we aspire to make all employee careers successful. This is why we offer the best career mobility solutions for employees so they can map their careers both inside and beyond our organization.”

Summary:

“The Unstoppable Career Wave” is coming. Because of marketplace conditions including low hires, low separations and low quits and the probability of 2m+ career transitioners through 2025-2030. Because of this developing career transitioning and planning solutions for employees will become the no:1 priority for CPO’s and HR Leaders. For those of you who just want the data and insights this is a good place to stop and reflect. For those of you who also want to consider solutions then the next part of this article is for you.

Career Mobility Solutions – What the Best do Best:

Before we jump into a discussion on solutions, we should take a quick detour into the distinction between career “Marketplaces” that are focused on helping employees find jobs and “Career Playgrounds” focused on building long term Career Pathways. Career Playgrounds address “The Unstoppable Career Wave” where 24 million workers are set to redefine their futures by 2030.

The best Career Playgrounds:

1. Layout a landscape of roles, gigs and projects for employees to visualize and guide employees to high impact roles and gigs.
2. Enable employees to build career pathways towards Dream Career moves over an expanded planning horizon.
3. Link each career move along a Career Pathway with Skill Development and Skills are linked to Learning and Experiences.
4. Reveal for employees Skills and Skill Descriptions, Skill Levels, Pay and Performance data for each move.
5. Generate Career Pathways that can be shared with managers, mentors and coaches who can make career and skill development suggestions.

Career Playgrounds guide employees to high impact roles and gigs:

AI builds Career Playgrounds where employees can easily view roles, gigs and projects that might be of interest to them. Based on knowing the company name and Industry the AI builds a Career Playground for every organization and every employee. Of course, the organization can tailor Career Playgrounds, but the AI is doing the heavy lifting. The AI builds the Career Playground of roles and gigs and categorizes them by function (see the picture below). What’s unique is the AI can prioritize roles and gigs based on impact.

What’s so interesting about this?

Employees can look across the landscape of roles and gigs (with organizational applied signposts for impact) and using drag and drop employees can move roles and gigs onto a Career Pathway broken down into Now, Next and Dream moves.?Btw. this Now, Next and Dream model for skills was developed from the writings of Geraldine Murphy, Global Learning Experience Manager at The Heineken Company. Geraldine commented as follows in the Linkedin Learning Trends report for 2024:

“L&D pros must help employees prioritize three things: skills for the job they do now; skills for the job they want tomorrow; and skills that will serve them for life.”

Career Pathways guide employees towards Dream Careers over an expanded horizon.

Ok before you raise those eyebrows, here is AI’s party trick. Based on knowing the employee’s Now role and chosen Dream role based on AI suggestions, the AI will generate a complete Career Pathway from Now to Next and from Next to Dream. The Career Pathway is generated automatically by the AI (see career pathway pictures below).

Career Pathways link each career move with Skills and Skills are linked to learning and On-the-Job Experiences:

AI generates a view of the highest impact skills for each move along the Career Pathway. These skills include technical and critical non-technical soft skills. The AI also generates a Personalized Learning Management system (LMS) based on the skills employees prioritize for development (see the picture below). The personalized LMS includes the best free and paid Courses, Masterclasses run by the world’s top experts, Articles written by leading authorities, TedTalks presented by experts and counter-intuitive thought-provoking YouTubers.

OK, let’s geek out together. Yes, ha-ha.

Get this, AI will generate a list of suggested On-the-Job experiences for each skill and make them relevant for Skill levels. Yes, like foundation or Expert level.

The AI Generates pay and performance data for every move along the Career Pathway and even for Skill Levels:

Here is something amazing that AI does, and every CPO and HR leader will understand the value of this. Carly Jones, Head of People and Talent at Sourcegraph taught us about the value of exposing pay bands data to employees. Transparency about pay and banding builds trust with employees. The AI will generate performance and pay band data for every Career Pathway move and I assure you the sources of data are more than comparable with your current data vendor. It will present the data in a table for every employee for every move with Skill Levels, Skill Descriptions, Performance Criteria and Pay bands applicable with the appropriate Pay Zone for every employee (see the picture below).

Career Pathways can be shared with Managers, Mentors and Coaches who can make Career and Skill Development suggestions:

The best career pathways are collaborative. You can’t build a successful career on your own. Career Pathways are shared with Managers, Mentors and Coaches who can look at team members’ Career Pathways and make suggestions. Maybe it looks about perfect or maybe the Mentor or Manager can see something different for the employee. Maybe a different career move or a completely different Career Pathway towards a completely different Dream. Managers, Mentors and Coaches can look across the landscape of roles and gigs and drag and drop suggestions onto the Career Pathway that will then show up for the Team Member (See the picture below). AI becomes the Career Pathway collaboration platform between Manager and Team Members.

Just in case you are thinking, can it also do this for Skill Development? The answer is Yes it can!

Summary:

The purpose of this article was to explain the story that sits behind the “The Unstoppable Career Wave” that is coming. I will reiterate the key points. Because of Low Hires, Low Separations and low Quit levels and because of “The Unstoppable Career Wave” whereby 2m employees will be looking to transition their careers through 20235-2030 a focus on Career Transitioning strategies and solutions powered by AI will become the No:1 priority for CPOs.

As I have stated in this article and previous ones, the winds of change are knocking on our door again. A new era is whistling towards us and it’s not a westerly breeze it’s a tsunami called “AI”. Organizations that fail to embrace AI risk an employee-led uprising, driven by dissatisfaction and a sense of being undervalued and underprepared for the AI-driven future. Organizations that proactively create an “AI Odyssey” for their workforce that harnesses the transformative power of AI to plan for "The Unstoppable Career Wave" redefine Career Pathways, enhance employee engagement, and drive continuous development will attract and retain top talent and become the hi performing companies of tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, Alan.

All the pictures in this article illustrate the capabilities of our LLM and Career Playground Portal powered by ChatGPT4.0. More information can be found at reaching4.ai

If you’re a CPO, HR or L&D Leader and you found this article helpful, please repost to your network and comment on the parts that were most helpful. Thanks a million.

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