• Demand for AI skills is expected to grow in 2025, driven by tech and non-tech firms.
• Tech industry hiring could rebound after several slow years, driven by demand for AI skills.
• AI skills are often scarce, with high vacancy rates for roles like natural language processing.

People and companies are placing big bets on artificial intelligence. One of the safer ones is that demand for workers with AI skills will continue to grow.

Labor market watchers told Business Insider that in 2025, as in 2024, many employers will likely be eager to hire people with skills in AI — like machine-learning specialists who train models, one of this year's most-talked-about roles — but also in wider areas that touch the technology.

In the tech industry, which has experienced years of lackluster hiring following a pandemic-era surge, there are early signs of a rebound, Hannah Calhoon, VP of AI at Indeed, told BI.

If that continues, she said, hiring will likely include roles involving AI.

Another area of demand, Calhoon said, could come from employers that aren't tech firms yet that need people skilled in incorporating off-the-shelf AI tools into their businesses and datasets.

However, unlike the tech giants, these employers aren't likely to try to build their own AI platforms, she said. So, rather than trying to recruit data scientists and those machine-learning engineers, these companies might instead want workers who can help decide which AI instruments to use and how to incorporate them into their workflow.

"What they're going to be looking for is people who understand those systems and can help them implement those tools in their business," Calhoon said.

That's likely to translate to increased demand in 2025 for roles involving AI implementation and transformation — jobs like applications administrators or solutions architects, she said.

There are other signs that the demand for talent involving AI is picking up.

Last week, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that the company is experiencing "a big hiring surge" and working to fill thousands of roles to help sell products, including those involving AI. Benioff said the company has 9,000 referrals for the 2,000 positions it's opened.

Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank, likewise recently talked up AI's potential. At an event with President-elect Donald Trump last week, Son said that the Japanese conglomerate would invest $100 billion into the US over the next four years and create at least 100,000 jobs in AI and related areas.

Already, other employers are looking to grow around AI. According to Indeed, job postings mentioning AI that saw the biggest growth in the first 11 months of 2024 were senior scientists, software engineering managers, research engineers, and researchers.

AI know-how is scarce for some roles

The market may be growing, though it can be hard for employers to hire in some AI-related areas. The talent firm Randstad reports that it's twice as difficult to find and hire senior-level workers skilled in AI and automation as it is for other senior-level jobs in different industries.

Vacancy rates for roles involving specialized AI skills, like developing natural-language processing models, are as high as 15%, Randstad found. That's about double the overall job vacancy rate in the US. Randstad's estimate on AI jobs is based on an assessment of some 10 million job postings and 136 million résumés in the third quarter of 2024.

According to Randstad, employers worldwide are having the hardest time finding workers skilled in natural language processing, predictive modeling, and "stakeholder communication." The firm notes that this is partly because such abilities are specialized yet also in demand across industries.

In the US, Randstad said, the vacancy rate for jobs that require skills like natural language processing stands at 14%.

Starting from a small base

Indeed recently reported that, as of September, the share of US job postings that mention generative AI or related terminology was up 3.5 times year over year.

Yet that doesn't mean that all employers are looking for GenAI whizzes. Indeed found that only 2% of employers globally included skills related to AI in their job descriptions. By comparison, more than 20% called for basic computer skills.

Nevertheless, Calhoon said, employers' demands for AI skills are only likely to grow.

"Maybe not next year, but three or four years from now, in many roles, there will be an expectation that people will have basic fluency in being able to use some of these platforms," she said.

That's likely in part because it's not only major employers that will expect workers to have AI skills.

Andy Schachtel, CEO of Sourcefit, an offshore staffing firm, told BI that businesses of all sizes are looking to AI to boost efficiency.

The US Chamber of Commerce found in a mid-2024 survey of 1,100 small businesses that four in 10 reported using generative AI, up from 23% in 2023. About three-quarters of small businesses surveyed said they plan to adopt emerging tech like AI.

That could add to the already surging demand for leaders who are experts in AI. According to a review of more than 35,000 public and private companies in the US by Altrata, a research firm focused on executive data, the number of people in the role of chief AI officer or its equivalent — a job many people may not have heard of until this year — was up 70% year-over-year through late October.

That demand is likely one reason that workers with AI skills or who possess capabilities working with AI tools are, on average, 34% more likely to change jobs, according to Randstad.

Nicole Kyle, who researches the future of work, told BI that even for parts of a business where AI might be expected to take on a good share of the workload — like call centers —its adoption would likely increase demand for other roles.

She said that in the case of call centers, for example, those added roles might include positions involving data governance and data cleaning, as well as customer experience. That's one reason Kyle, who's cofounder of CMP Research, said she remains optimistic about AI's impact on jobs.

"I do think net-net, it will create jobs the way other technological advancements have," Kyle said.

• Gig work has expanded to include nurses at hospitals and medical facilities, per a new report.
• Many nurses who work this way face challenges similar to Uber drivers, the report found.
• Nursing represents a high-stakes use case of gig work apps, one of the researchers said.

Gig work has expanded to the nurses who care for patients in hospitals and care homes — and it's coming with some of the same challenges that delivery and rideshare contractors have already pointed to, according to a new report.

Apps like CareRev, Clipboard Health, and ShiftKey have taken an approach similar to the one companies like Uber and Instacart have used to build up their workforces, and applied it to nursing at hospitals, care homes, and other medical facilities.

But the report, which the Roosevelt Institute released a summary of this week, found that medical facilities often turn to gig nursing services as a way to cut expenses, especially under the tutelage of private equity firms.

Medical professionals on the apps, which the report collectively calls "Uber for Nursing," also face many of the same issues that other gig workers do, from low pay to having their accounts on the platforms deactivated with little or no explanation.

The apps make pitches that are attractive to the nurses themselves, Katie Wells, a senior Fellow at think tank Groundwork Collaborative and one of the report's authors, told Business Insider in an interview. Wells wrote the report with Funda Ustek Spilda, a senior lecturer at King's College London and a research associate at the University of Oxford's Oxford Internet Institute.

Full-time nursing jobs often involve putting in long hours as well as working night or weekend shifts. COVID's strain on hospitals and other medical facilities also pushed many nurses to quit or consider finding other work.

Like rideshare and delivery companies, the apps say that they offer nurses more choices over how and when they work. ShiftKey's website, for instance, says that its users have "the freedom to make choices best suited to their lives" including how much they earn and "their relationship with work."

For a burned-out nurse, that can be an appealing pitch, Wells said.

"There is almost no flexibility and control," Wells said. "So it is no wonder that these apps become attractive."

Wells and Spilda interviewed 29 nurses and nursing assistants for their study. The interviewees all used at least one gig work app to find nursing shifts.

Like delivery and rideshare contractors, nurses who use the apps must claim jobs through them. The nursing apps often charge a fee for access, and workers bid with their pay rates. The user who offers the lowest pay gets the shift, according to the report.

Working the shift, however, can be tricky. When they show up for a gig, the nurses often have to navigate the facility themselves — even if they have never worked there before.

"At most hospitals and medical facilities, no orientations are required for gig nurses and nursing assistants," the report reads. "Workers do not know where supply closets are located, how to access patient portals with medical histories and current medication lists, and whom to contact in the chain of command."

And like Uber drivers or Instacart delivery workers, nurses who use the apps don't have a boss to contact when things go wrong. One Oregon-based nurse interviewed for the study said that she was barred from Clipboard Health's app for two weeks after she had a hernia on the job and had to leave early.

In another instance, the same nurse said that she went to work with COVID after learning that she couldn't cancel her shift without losing "attendance points" and hurting her chances of getting gigs in the future, the report reads.

"It sucks that there's nobody that you can get ahold of immediately," the nurse told Wells and Spilda.

"It's really as if AI has eaten the managers," Wells said.

The apps also advertise that nurses can make more on their platforms than at other jobs. One nurse interviewed by the researchers said she made gross pay of $23 an hour on ShiftKey. That dropped to around $13 an hour after accounting for fees that she paid to ShiftKey.

Despite the challenges, the report found that 19 of the 29 people interviewed planned to continue working for the apps, though some also said they also had jobs in other industries to make enough money to live.

The report says that gig nursing apps are often used by facilities that are trying to save money and are under pressure to produce returns for investors.

Wells told BI that bringing the gig economy to medical care creates risks not present in food delivery or rideshare.

"The stakes are higher because this has to do with patient safety, and the immediacy of health and care makes things more palpable," she told BI.

ShiftMed, which employs its nurses as W2 employees but still offers them much of the flexibility of gig work, said that it deactivates nurses' accounts for various reasons, from patient safety to legal violations.

"Nurses file an appeal by submitting a formal review through the app or support channel, after which ShiftMed conducts an internal investigation, reviews records, and determines the next steps," CEO Todd Walrath said in a statement to BI.

The company said that it also offers an orientation so that users "are fully prepared for any clinical setting by aligning health system-specific requirements, such as training or shadowing before they begin shifts," Walrath said.

CareRev, Clipboard Health, and ShiftKey did not respond to requests for comment.

Are you a nurse who works as an independent contractor with a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]

• Many older Americans regret some career choices that affected retirement plans and job prospects.
• Regrets include not prioritizing education, frequent job changes, and involvement in office drama.
• This is part of an ongoing series about older Americans' regrets.

For millions of Americans, retiring at 65 is just a dream.

Since September, BI has heard from older Americans about their career regrets in two surveys it conducted.

Over 3,000 people between the ages of 48 and 96 completed a voluntary BI survey or emailed reporters about their life regrets. In a separate survey, over 300 recently laid-off Americans over 50 shared their career regrets. We followed up with 13 interviews to learn more. This is part of an ongoing series.

Some common themes people discussed included not prioritizing education, switching jobs too frequently, and struggling to navigate office politics. Many also cited age discrimination — data from AARP found that 64% of those over 50 have either seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace. Nearly all said they were passed over for some roles in favor of younger applicants with lower pay expectations, particularly in white-collar roles where hiring has slowed.

We want to hear from you. Are you an older American with any life regrets that you would be comfortable sharing with a reporter? Please fill out this quick form.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that 18.9% of Americans 65 and older — about 11.4 million people — still work, many for financial or social reasons. Some returned to work after retiring, citing financial concerns.

Not prioritizing or getting the wrong kind of education

Lou Nelson, 63, was an executive assistant in the medical devices industry for 25 years but faced two layoffs since 2021. She hasn't had luck securing work since January.

For most of her career, she had few regrets about not having a bachelor's degree because she worked for top healthtech companies and said she was well respected. However, after sending out over 50 applications, she suspects not having a degree has impeded her search.

"Nobody wants to hire someone that's 63 years old, and I don't know if it's because of pay or experience," said Nelson, who lives in Texas.

A college degree is still a big boon to finding and holding a job. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest jobs report showed that Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher had an unemployment rate of 2.4% in November 2024, while those with only a high-school diploma had an unemployment rate nearly twice as high, at 4.6%.

Grover McBeath, 79, said not having either limited his career options. He struggled through school and dropped out in eighth grade.

He joined the Air Force and worked in electronics for most of his career, but he lacked job satisfaction. Though he traveled the world for work and his salary peaked at $38,000 a year, he said he had an "unstable, nomadic lifestyle." McBeath took Social Security at 62 and relies on the $1,108 a month he receives. He lives in affordable housing in Nevada and receives SNAP benefits to help pay for food.

"I was in a career field that I didn't have an aptitude for, and many times, I just felt so lost in what I was doing, which is why I bounced around a lot," McBeath said, adding he wished he prioritized education.

Still, many believe a college degree isn't worth the financial burden. A Pew Research Center survey of US adults conducted at the end of 2023 found that just 22% of respondents believed a four-year college degree would be worth it if they had to take out loans.

Some older Americans BI spoke with agreed that their degrees haven't helped further their careers. Lynda Namey, 54, was a healthcare business manager for two decades, making $62,000 a year at her peak. However, after a divorce that put her in debt, she said she panicked and returned to school for her master's and doctorate degrees in counseling from Liberty University. She had no strong desire to pursue the degrees but did it because she expected them to help her land higher-paying roles.

That hasn't panned out. The Alabama resident removed her doctorate from her résumé to not appear overqualified. While searching for a full-time job, she's held part-time consulting, life coaching, and independent contractor roles. She also teaches meditation.

"I'm a middle-aged woman who has to completely support myself. I pay for my own insurance, and I've got to think about my future," Namey said. "I can't afford to take a job that pays $17 or $18 an hour. But those are the only jobs I get interviewed for."

Switching jobs frequently instead of building a cohesive career

Though a few job seekers regretted not looking enough for new roles, dozens said they regretted bouncing between jobs and career paths and not being more intentional about growing their networks.

After working in various industries, Dawn Habbena, 63, fell in love with human resources. But after her company was sold, she took a job in compliance for a wealth management company, which wasn't as satisfying as HR.

When Habbena faced a layoff during the pandemic, she struggled to get back into HR. Six months later, she got an HR job for a manufacturing plant, but she took another HR role after moving to help her aging mother. She described that role as "absolutely horrible," and she's since struggled to find another position — even as a grocery checker — after sending out over 1,000 applications.

Habbena wished she'd stayed focused on HR to accrue more experience and kept building her computer skills. She lives in a one-bedroom apartment with her 86-year-old mother and drives for DoorDash to stay afloat.

"I wish I had more confidence in what I did because I was easily knocked off," said Habbena, who lives in Texas.

Many older Americans, like Chuck Smith, 60, couldn't control how long they stayed in roles because of layoffs but wished they had settled somewhere more stable. Smith, from Massachusetts, worked in tech marketing for most of his career, making as much as six figures.

Smith was laid off in June 2023 and said he's since applied to over 2,700 roles and landed about 100 interviews. Though he and his wife are financially comfortable, Smith said he's worried about how quickly he's spending down his savings without a stable income.

Though hiring has remained steady for lower-income workers, the job market for six-figure earners has slumped. New LinkedIn data found hiring has fallen 27% in IT and 23% in product management and marketing since 2018. Middle managers have also faced hiring challenges — hiring levels fell 42% between April 2022 and October 2024, data from Revelio Labs found.

To be sure, recent data reveals that switching jobs often yields financial gains. A September Vanguard report found that the median job switcher received a 10% increase in pay. Still, it also showed a 0.7 percentage-point decline in people's retirement savings rate when switching jobs because 401(k) plan benefits can vary and people often make mistakes when rolling over retirement accounts.

AARP found that older workers who voluntarily change roles or industries in their 40s and 50s tend to retire later and have better work outcomes than their peers who stay in one role.

"They have better wage growth. They've experienced a higher success rate of staying in the workplace over those who might have been forced to change jobs later in their career," said Carly Roszkowski, the vice president of financial resilience programming at AARP.

Taking a risk on a business, contract roles, or an 'office bully'

Some respondents took risks that hurt them financially.

Michael R., 70, opened toy stores in New York throughout the 2000s, thinking they would grow enough that he could retire comfortably. However, when his businesses crashed amid the 2008 recession, he lost over $650,000 and declared bankruptcy.

"If I didn't do the business, I would have bought a house," Michael said, adding that in that scenario, he could've helped his whole family by selling his mom's house and gifting his siblings the money.

However, he had to move in with his mother, and after she died, he rented a studio apartment. He said he works nearly every day of the week at his friend's toy store and earns about $8,000 a month between his paycheck and his Social Security benefits.

"I'm still struggling just to pay my rent, my groceries, and my car. We don't get a raise. We don't get a bonus," Michael said. "I'm grateful I'm employed, but I can't go out looking for another job. Nobody's going to hire somebody who's 70 years old."

Some regretted taking risks working in contract roles instead of prioritizing full-time work. Mauricia Day, 74, never finished her degree and said she's held over 40 jobs — many contracted — in radio, tailoring, and office administration, making $30,000 a year at most. After a layoff in 2020, she hasn't found secure work. She works at a nonprofit in a part-time contract role that ends in December.

Day said because she knew little about saving and investing, she lived paycheck to paycheck. She wished she'd focused on securing full-time employment in one field instead of relying on unstable income. She receives $1,136 in Social Security and $317 from her pension each month, which is slightly more than her house payment.

"I wish I had focused more on a career; it would have probably helped better with retirement and investing," Day said, adding she stayed home for nearly 18 years raising her children. "I have a lot of friends who have been retired for 10 years, 15 years. I'm unsure why I'm still looking, but I know I'm still looking."

A few wished they took fewer risks navigating workplace dynamics. Robbi Sera, 59, said she had a stable career as a biotech project manager and made good financial decisions, such as maxing out her 401(k). However, she said she took a few risks at work that backfired.

Sera said she gave constructive feedback to a "company bully," which she said contributed to her layoff in February. She wished she'd stayed quiet until she locked down a different job, as she said the hiring landscape is "dismal."

Sera, who splits her time between California and Hawaii, said even though she's financially stable, she and her husband have cut back on spending significantly, rarely eating out or traveling. She earns $20 an hour as a contracted customer service agent for the aviation industry while searching for higher-paying roles.

"You just keep swimming and hope that something gets better," Sera said.

Are you an older American with any life regrets that you would be comfortable sharing with a reporter? Please fill out this quick form or email [email protected].

• Roofers, construction helpers, and grounds maintenance workers have higher fatal injury rates than many other jobs.
• Last year, logging workers had the highest rate per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers at 98.9.
• The overall rate dropped from 3.7 fatal injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2022 to 3.5.

Logging, transportation, and hunting work can be risky jobs in the US based on the latest fatal work injury rates released by the Labor Department.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently published data on fatal injuries at work in 2023 by industry and occupation.

Fatal injury rates at work were down overall last year. "A worker died every 99 minutes from a work-related injury in 2023 compared to 96 minutes in 2022," a news release from BLS on Thursday said.

Three civilian occupations had rates above 50 fatalities per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers. Logging workers had a fatal injury rate of almost 100 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2023, way above the overall rate of 3.5 fatalities per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers last year. That rate of 3.5 was a tick down from the rate of 3.7 in 2022.

Below are the 10 deadliest jobs in the US based on fatal work injuries per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers.

Puffs of smoke rose above a meadow in northeastern Washington as a small test fire danced in the grass a few feet away from me. Pleased by its slow, controlled behavior, my crew members and I, as part of a training program led by the nonprofit organization The Nature Conservancy and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, began to light the rest of the field on fire. The scene had all the trappings of a wildfire — water hoses, fire engines, people in flame-resistant outfits. But we weren't there to fight it; we were there to light it.

It might sound counterintuitive, but prescribed fires, or intentionally lit fires, help lessen fire's destruction. Natural flames sparked by lightning and intentional blazes lit by Indigenous peoples have historically helped clean up excess vegetation that now serves as fuel for the wildfires that regularly threaten people's homes and lives across the West and, increasingly, across the country.

For millennia, lighting fires was common practice in America. But in the mid-to-late 1800s, the US outlawed Indigenous burning practices and started suppressing wildfires, resulting in a massive buildup of flammable brush and trees. That combined with the dry, hot conditions caused by the climate crisis has left much of the country at a dangerously high risk of devastating wildfires. The top 10 most destructive years by acreage burned have all occurred since 2004.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, federal land managers reevaluated their approach to fire and did the first prescribed burns in national parks. We're still making up for lost time: Scientists and land managers say millions more acres of prescribed burns are necessary to keep the country from burning out of control.

But the scale of the task doesn't match that of the labor force, whose focus is often extinguishing fires, not starting them. Responding to the increase in natural disasters has left America with few resources to actually keep them from happening. As Mark Charlton, a prescribed-fire specialist with The Nature Conservancy, told me, "We need more people, and we need more time."

---

This fall, I outfitted myself in fire-resistant clothing and boots, donned a hard hat, and joined a training program called TREX to better understand how prescribed burns work. TREX hosts collaborative burns to provide training opportunities in the field for people from different employers and backgrounds. The hope is that more people will earn the qualifications they need to lead and participate in burns for the agencies they work for back home.

The program's emphasis on learning, coupled with the support of the University of Idaho's Artists-in-Fire Residency (which helped pay my way), is why I, a journalist with no fire jobs on my résumé, could join a prescribed-fire module of about two dozen more experienced participants. I had to pass a fitness test — speed walking three miles with a 45-pound backpack in under 45 minutes — take 40 hours' worth of online coursework, and complete field-operations training to participate as a crew member. While hundreds of people have participated in TREX burns across the country since the program's inception in 2008, the dramatic growth of wildfires is outpacing the number of people being trained to reduce their impact.

The Forest Service manages 193 million acres of forests and grasslands across the country, burning an average of about 1.4 million acres, roughly the size of Delaware, each year with prescribed burns. It burned a record 2 million acres in fiscal 2023. But it's still not enough preparation, considering wildfires have burned over 10 million acres in recent years and people continue building and living in wildfire-prone areas. "It's a huge workload we have, and we know it," said Adam Mendonca, a deputy director of fire and aviation management for the Forest Service who oversees the agency's prescribed-fire program. The agency plans to chip away at the problem with the roughly 11,300 wildland firefighters it employs each year who squeeze the work in during the offseason, when there are fewer fires to fight.

But relying on wildland firefighters can be problematic. "We only have those resources for a short time," said Charlton, who served as the incident commander on the Washington burns I joined this fall. "After a long fire season, people are exhausted. It's hard to get people to commit." Plus, wildfires are increasingly overlapping with the ideal windows to do prescribed burns — often the spring and the fall, when conditions are cooler and wetter, making fires easier to tame.

That was especially true this year: Multiple large fires burned across the West into October. These late-season wildfires, coupled with two hurricanes that firefighters helped respond to, strained federal resources. That month, the nation's fire-preparedness level increased to a 5 — the highest level — indicating the country's emergency crews were at their maximum capacity and would've struggled to respond to new incidents.

In response to the elevated preparedness level, the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group urged "extreme caution" in executing new prescribed fires, saying backup firefighters or equipment might not be available. "We get to the point where we're competing for resources," said Kyle Lapham, the certified-burner-program manager for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and the burn boss on the Washington burns.

There's also a qualification shortage. Prescribed burns require a well-rounded group with a variety of expertise and positions — including a burn boss, who runs the show and must have years of training. Charlton estimated that hundreds more qualified burn bosses are necessary to tackle nationwide prescribed-burn goals.

Just as concerning is an interest shortage. The Forest Service has struggled to hire for and maintain its federal firefighting force in recent years, in large part because of poor pay (federal firefighter base pay was raised to $15 an hour in 2022) and other labor disputes over job classifications, pay raises, staffing, and more. The agency is also expecting budget cuts next year and has already said it won't be able to hire its usual seasonal workforce as a result.

Legislation inching its way through Congress could help, though its fate under a new administration is unclear. The National Prescribed Fire Act of 2024 would direct hundreds of millions of dollars to the Forest Service and the US Department of the Interior for prescribed burns, including investment in training a skilled workforce — but it hasn't progressed past a Senate subcommittee hearing in June.

Without a boost in funding, the agency will continue relying heavily on partnerships with nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy and the National Forest Foundation to staff prescribed burns. The Forest Service also recently expanded its Prescribed Fire Training Center to host educational opportunities out West. Critically, though, time is of the essence.

---

During my TREX training in October, about 20 foresters and firefighters from as far south as Texas and as far north as British Columbia worked beside me. Our group included employees of the Washington Department of Natural Resources and two citizens of the nearby Spokane Tribe of Indians, who have a robust prescribed-fire program of their own.

Over two weeks I got a front-row seat to how much planning (sometimes years) and time a single prescribed burn takes. We conducted several burns in the mountains north of Spokane on the property of a receptive landowner who'd hosted TREX in previous years. He provided the training ground and, in exchange, got work done on his property. This isn't a common scenario — burning on private land can be more complicated, and so more burns happen on state or federal property.

When I arrived, the burn's incident-management team had already put together a burn plan detailing our objectives — reducing wildfire risk to the landowner's house, thinning small tree saplings, knocking down invasive weeds, opening up more wildlife habitat — and the exact weather conditions, like wind speed, relative humidity, and temperature, we needed to safely burn. Prescribed burns on federal lands also go through an environmental review.

At the site, we scouted contained areas we would burn, called units, with trainees making additional plans for how to ignite and control fires. Keeping a fire in its intended location, called "holding," meant lots of prep work, like digging shallow trenches to box the fire in. During the burn, teams monitored smoke and occasionally sprayed the larger trees we wanted to preserve with water when flames threatened their canopies; others poured fuel on the ground, igniting bushes, grass, and smaller trees to slowly build the fire.

Managing the fire didn't end when we finished burning the 30 or so acres. In some cases, it can involve days of monitoring and cleanup. To make sure the fire was out, my crew and I combed through areas we'd burned the day before for smoke or heat. If we discovered something still smoking, we'd churn up the ground with a shovel or pickax, douse the hot spot with water, and repeat. Just when we thought we were done, we'd find another spot we'd missed.

I went to bed those nights dreaming of little puffs of smoke and woke up with small flakes of ash embedded behind my ears. The work was rewarding and exhausting — I left with a deeper appreciation for the workers who do it for a living.

While every prescribed burn is different, it's always a careful equation. Everything needs to line up: supportive communities, the right weather, and, of course, the workers necessary to plan, burn, and extinguish. Only then can you light the match.

---

Kylie Mohr is a Montana-based freelance journalist and correspondent for the magazine High Country News.

• The hiring trends among creator-economy startups can tell you a lot about the state of the industry.
• Creator Economy Jobs analyzed hiring posts from over 600 companies in 2024.
• Silicon Valley still has a grip on creator-related tech, while London could be the "next big" hub.

Being a creator isn't the only career path in the creator economy.

Creator Economy Jobs, a job listings platform founded by James Creech, analyzed hiring posts from over 600 creator-economy companies in 2024.

Across the board, creator-economy startups were generally hiring for roles in engineering, marketing, product, and sales.

"This year, the creator economy has definitely felt more energy and activity," Creech, who is also an investor and advisor to several creator startups, told Business Insider.

Since launching in late 2023, the platform has pooled over 1,000 job listings from creator-economy companies each quarter.

Creech's job site pulls listings from various third-party platforms and applicant tracking systems, like LinkedIn, Greenhouse, and Lever, among others. Some companies also list jobs directly through the site, Creech said.

While the creator economy — from Big Tech companies to startups — was hit hard by layoffs over the last few years, the post-hype-cycle industry appears to be landing on two feet.

Creech predicts that heading into 2025, more companies will emerge as strong players in the space and expand teams with hiring. That could prove true as a handful of creator startups have raised millions in 2024 — some, like newsletter platform Beehiiv, with the intent to hire.

Another trend Creech expects in the creator economy next year is corporate brands continuing to hire creators to fill in-house roles.

Here are a few takeaways on the state of jobs in the creator economy:

1. Creator-economy startups are in the market for engineers

"The most in-demand jobs are engineering," Creech said. "As we think about what types of companies in this space are growing and needing help, it's a lot of software businesses."

The majority of the engineering roles on CEJ are either backend or full-stack, Creech added.

Since the second quarter, the platform has had over 500 engineering jobs listed quarter-over-quarter.

The second and third most in-demand categories of jobs were in sales and marketing, respectively, Creech said.

2. Silicon Valley still has a hold on the creator economy

"We all think, 'Oh, the creator economy is Los Angeles,'" said Creech, who is based in LA himself. "When we started publishing these reports, the San Francisco Bay Area ranks the highest."

That's, in part, due to the sheer number of startups still building in the broader Silicon Valley area.

LA and New York City were the next largest US job markets throughout the year, Creech said. Meanwhile, international cities such as London, Bangkok, and Berlin have also been hubs for jobs on the platform.

"The international markets are growing really rapidly," Creech said. "We believe that the creator economy is a global phenomenon, and you're seeing people can live anywhere and build great businesses all over, and that's reflected in the fact that there are cool companies and cool jobs everywhere now."

Creech also identified London as "the next big creator economy destination."

3. These 6 companies were some of the most active job listers for 2024

When analyzing the top hiring creator-economy companies, CEJ excludes big platforms like Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest. The six companies below consistently listed new jobs within the creator economy throughout 2024, according to CEJ's data.

• Coda Payments, a monetization platform for digital products
• ElevenLabs, a generative AI and video-dubbing startup
• Impact.com, an affiliate-marketing company
• Lightricks, a content-creation and editing company
• Podimo, a podcast and audiobook platform
• Whatnot, a live-shopping company

Whatnot told BI that it would continue to prioritize hiring across all of its teams in 2025.

And Lightricks, which currently has 40 open roles, told BI that it plans to expand its teams in 2025 as it continues to build generative AI products.

ElevenLabs, meanwhile, said it plans to double its "core team" in 2025 with a focus on engineering and sales roles, while also expanding the company with hubs in Poland and India.

• My teenage daughter needed logistical and emotional support to thrive in her first job.
• We tried to be purposeful about helping her save some of her earnings.
• She's also learning the importance of work-life balance.

When my daughter got her first real job at 14, I was excited for her.

I had hoped getting a job at a young age would improve her self-esteem, time management, and money management skills.

While she did earn all those skills, she required a gentle push from me. Little did I know that my teen's first job would be a learning experience for me, too.

Here's what I discovered in supporting her.

She needed help with startup costs and rides

The adage, "You must spend money to make money," held true for my teenager. Before she saw her first paycheck as a server for a local catering company, our daughter needed to purchase work attire, including dress pants, a button-down shirt, and shoes. My husband and I decided to fund these startup costs, considering them an investment in her burgeoning job skills.

We also invested time in shuttling her to and from events — and soon found ourselves spending more hours in the car than we'd expected. Though most events were nearby, some were located almost an hour away. We realized our family schedule wouldn't always mesh with our teen's enthusiasm for working, which meant she had to turn down some opportunities.

Still, we tried to make the stars align whenever possible, taking turns as her Uber drivers and coordinating carpools because we saw how much our daughter enjoyed her job. She loved working a party with a tray of fancy appetizers in hand, seeing beautiful brides at weddings, and chatting with coworkers in the lull between serving and clearing dishes.

But there were stressful times, too. After one wedding during which drinks were spilled at the head table and guests were served the wrong entrées, our teen came home frazzled and upset.

"Some of those mistakes were my fault," she told us. The pride we usually saw in her face after she'd worked an event was gone, replaced by sadness and worry.

We shared some of our own embarrassing work mishaps to normalize that no one — including adults — performs their job perfectly all the time. We reminded her that mistakes happen, but what matters is how she learns from them.

We helped her establish a plan to save some of her earnings

Our daughter was excited to earn her own money and even more excited to spend it. Though we had talked with her about the importance of saving, we quickly discovered that Target, DoorDash, and Starbucks were kryptonite for our teen girl's wallet. Her first hard-earned paycheck disappeared in a flash.

Although we sometimes cringed at our daughter's impulse buys, we also recognized how hard she had worked to afford them. We wanted her to enjoy her newfound purchasing power, but without spending every last dime she'd earned.

After discussing options with our daughter, we made a deal: She got to keep most of her earnings, but a small percentage of each paycheck would be funneled into a savings account. The arrangement gave her enough money for everyday purchases using her debit card while ensuring she could build up savings over time.

She had to learn the importance of work-life balance

My teenagers will confirm that I nag them about getting enough sleep, but my well-meaning words don't always resonate. When my daughter wanted to work a last-minute shift on the same weekend she had a soccer tournament, I considered saying no but ultimately let her sign up.

After a whirlwind of soccer games, outfit changes, and lengthy car commutes, my daughter was clearly exhausted.

Now, she's more intentional about prioritizing her activities — whether she's studying for an exam, working at her new restaurant job, playing soccer, or spending time with friends — because she realized trying to do it all wasn't sustainable. Allowing her the freedom to manage her work, school, and extracurricular hours taught her more about work-life balance than my most passionate lectures ever could.

Whatever career our daughter pursues, I know that someday, she'll no longer need close support from her parents to thrive in her job. When that day comes, we'll continue cheering her on from a distance.

• Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski spoke about AI and the workforce.
• Siemiatkowski said AI "can already do all of the jobs" humans do.
• He said Klarna stopped hiring a year ago despite the company advertising jobs online.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski is all-in on artificial intelligence at the fintech company.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Siemiatkowski said he's "of the opinion that AI can already do all of the jobs that we as humans do."

"It's just a question of how we apply it and use it," he said.

Klarna is a payment service that offers consumers "buy now, pay later" options. According to its website, the company is connected with more than 575,000 retailers.

The increased attention around AI has raised concerns about how it will affect careers and the workplace. A 2023 report by McKinsey & Company estimated that 12 million American workers will have to change occupations by 2030 as AI technology develops.

During the interview, Siemiatkowski said Klarna stopped hiring last year.

"I think what we've done internally hasn't been reported as widely. We stopped hiring about a year ago, so we were 4,500 and now we're 3,500," Siemiatkowski said. "We have a natural attrition like every tech company. People stay about five years, so 20% leave every year. By not hiring, we're simply shrinking, right?"

Siemiatkowski said his company has told employees that "what's going to happen is the total salary cost of Klarna is going to shrink, but part of the gain of that is going to be seen in your paycheck."

Although Klarna's website is advertising open positions at the time of writing, a spokesperson told Business Insider the company is not "actively recruiting" to expand its workforce. Rather, Klarna is backfilling "some essential roles," primarily in engineering.

• Boeing has committed $1 billion to expand its 787 Dreamliner manufacturing plant in South Carolina.
• The investment aims to upgrade infrastructure and create 500 jobs over five years.
• Boeing is looking to ramp production up after a tough year in which it faced major losses.

Boeing said on Thursday it will commit $1 billion to its 787 Dreamliner manufacturing plant in South Carolina as it seeks to ramp up production after a difficult 2024.

The Virginia-based firm has planned for the investment to go toward infrastructure upgrades at the site and creating 500 new jobs in the next five years.

Boeing announced in a joint press release with the South Carolina Department of Commerce that the outlay will expand its two North Charleston campuses to help support increased production of 787 Dreamliners to meet production targets and a potential future rise in market demand.

The aircraft manufacturing giant hopes to reach a rate of 10 planes a month by 2026, up from below five a month in July 2024.

Boeing has struggled to keep up with its order backlog amid questions about its quality control following the Alaska Airlines blowout in January. Its problems were compounded when over 30,000 factory workers went on strike for nearly seven weeks.

The aviation giant has a backlog of around 5,400 commercial aircraft worth roughly $428 billion.

Boeing's announcement comes as the planemaker faces competition from Airbus, which said in April it would increase its production of its rival A350 jet from 10 a month in 2026 to 12 a month in 2028.

Boeing is facing a troubled financial outlook after a difficult year, in which it replaced its CEO and faced heavy scrutiny from regulators. It posted a loss of over $6 billion in the third quarter of 2024, and during the factory worker strike, it said it would seek to raise $24.3 billion to boost its liquidity. Its share price has dropped 37% since the start of the year.

• AI is opening new career tracks for software developers who want to shift to different roles.
• Developers at an AI roundtable said that the tech job market is fluctuating rapidly with gen AI.
• This article is part of "CXO AI Playbook" — straight talk from business leaders on how they're testing and using AI.

A few years ago, Kesha Williams was prepared to step away from her tech career — but then the AI boom brought her back.

"I've been in tech for 30 years, and before gen AI, I was ready to retire," she said. "I think I'll stay around just to see where this goes." Williams is the head of enterprise architecture and engineering at Slalom.

Williams and six other developers from companies including Amazon, Meta, Anaconda, and more joined Business Insider's virtual roundtable in November to discuss how AI is changing the software development landscape.

While hiring and recruitment in many tech jobs are dropping with the increased adoption of AI coding tools, developers say AI is also opening new career opportunities.

A new career path

Panelists said that the emergence of jobs focused on building AI models and features is a recent development in the industry.

"One of the biggest things I've noticed in the last two to three years is the rise of a job title called 'AI engineer,' which did not exist before, and it's kind of in between a machine-learning engineer and a traditional software engineer," Shruti Kapoor, a lead member of technical staff at Slack, said. "I'm starting to see more and more companies where 'AI engineer' is one of the top-paying jobs available for software engineers."

Salary trends from Levels.fyi, an online platform that allows tech workers to compare their compensation packages, found that in the past two years, entry-level AI engineers can earn 8% more than their non-AI engineer counterparts, and senior engineers can earn nearly 11% more.

Neeraj Verma, the head of applied AI at Nice, said at the roundtable that AI has enabled software engineers at his company to transition internally to AI roles. He said that over 20% of the developers at Nice have moved to AI-related positions in the past two years, with about 100 of those individuals considered experts in prompt engineering.

Verma said the company's developers are not just being supported by AI; they are actively involved in using the technology to build other AI features.

He added that many senior-level developers with strong coding abilities at the company have shown interest in moving to AI to apply their skill sets in new ways. Nice created training programs to help these employees learn the technology and make internal career shifts.

AI-specialized jobs encompass machine-learning engineers, prompt engineers, and AI researchers, among other roles. Although the skills that would be useful for each of these jobs can differ, Kapoor said that an AI engineering role does not necessarily require a specific tech background. Workers with prior experience in sectors like accounting and product management, for instance, have been able to pivot into the AI space.

Adapting to change

Just as AI is changing the software development process, developers say that the professional opportunities in AI could also be in constant flux.

"Software development will change in five years much more rapidly than anything we've seen before," Igor Ostrovsky, the cofounder of Augment, said at the roundtable. "How you architect, develop, test, and maintain software — that will all change, and how exactly you interact with AI will also evolve."

Researchers are already questioning the long-term potential of prompt engineering jobs, which skyrocketed in demand in 2023. They say that generative AI models could soon be trained to optimize their own prompts.

"I think prompt engineering is more of a sign that some developers have the desire to learn and are eager to figure out how to interact with artificial intelligence, but it won't necessarily be how you interact with AI in three years or five years," Ostrovsky said.

The pace of technological development means that software developers' ability to learn, adapt, and solve problems creatively will be more important than ever to stay ahead of the curve.

Bedbugs and cockroaches. Filthy shared equipment. Constant surveillance, and zero control over their accounts. These are just some of the deplorable conditions adult cammers say they face on the job.

When Russ Schmidt was about 12, he was helping out on his family's farm in rural Kansas when his father looked at him and said, "You're not worth anything if you're not working."

Those words fixed themselves in Schmidt's brain. Decades later — at age 66 — they still have a hold on him.

"I was, I am, a really good employee," he says. Through his two careers in San Francisco, first as an administrator and then as a nurse for 20-odd years, he often did more than what his job required. "I see something that needs to be done, I do it," he says. He rarely took time off, so before he could officially retire in February 2023, he had to use the four months of vacation time he had accrued.

The change of pace of retirement was rough. His life became a cycle of alternating between bed and couch, eating and watching Netflix. He told himself he needed rest and recuperation — "but at some point," he says, "I realized this is settling into depression." After six months, Schmidt found a job working at a sexual-health clinic for two days a week.

When we think of retirement, we often think of endless leisure and zero responsibility. You might imagine yourself relaxing poolside with a book, strolling through a golf course, or binge-watching TV shows. In fact, many retirees live like this. The 2023 American Time Use Survey found that adults between 65 and 74 spent, on average, almost seven hours a day on leisure and sports, with four of those hours spent watching TV. Adults 25 to 54, on the other hand, averaged about four hours of leisure time and about two hours watching TV.

Spending your twilight years lying around might sound ideal — after all, everyone deserves a chance to relax after decades of working. But research suggests a life of pure leisure doesn't make you happier or healthier. About a third of American adults have said they struggled in transitioning to a life without work, and sedentary lifestyles are associated with earlier death. People are living about 15 years longer than they did a hundred years ago, which means we have many more years to spend in retirement. While there's much hand-wringing over how to save up enough money to enjoy those work-free years, much less discussed is how we should spend those years. More and more research is finding that both physical and social activity are crucial for well-being in old age — they keep people happier and living longer.

But that's not what most people are doing. Americans are doing retirement all wrong.

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The concept of retirement as we know it came from German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who in 1889 designed a social insurance program compelling the government to care for people who couldn't work because of age or disability. When Social Security was established in the US in 1935, the retirement age was set at 65, though the average life expectancy was about 60 years. The norm was for people to work until they could not work anymore. Today the average life expectancy is about 77, and the age you can start receiving full Social Security benefits is either 66 or 67, depending on when you were born. We're working longer and living longer.

That has created two problems: People need to figure out how to pay for a longer retirement and how to spend their time. Anqi Chen, a senior research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, says people are addressing both by simply working longer. Researchers, she says, have seen more people claim Social Security while they're still earning an income — something that used to be typical only of retirees. Of Americans 65 and older, nearly 11 million, or about 19%, are employed, and that number is projected to rise to nearly 15 million by 2032. Twenty years ago, just under 5 million Americans over 65 were employed.

"People think that this transition is a piece of cake, and it's not," Cascio says. "It can feel like jumping off a cliff."

Schmidt straddles these scenarios. Before retirement, he changed jobs too often to properly build up a pension — something he didn't realize until it was too late. Now finances are tight. "In that sense, retirement has been a letdown and a struggle," he says. He and his husband, who hasn't yet retired, have watched their savings dip even as Schmidt contributes through his part-time work.

Dee Cascio, a counselor and retirement coach in Sterling, Virginia, says the growing urge to work in retirement points to a larger issue: Work fulfills a lot of needs that people don't know how to get elsewhere, including relationships, learning, identity, direction, stability, and a sense of order. The structure that work provides is hard to move away from, says Cascio, who is 78 and still practicing. "People think that this transition is a piece of cake, and it's not," she says. "It can feel like jumping off a cliff."

In an online survey conducted early this year by Mass Mutual, a majority of retirees said they'd become less stressed and more relaxed upon retirement, but as many as a third reported that they'd become unhappier. Research from the Health and Retirement Study from the University of Michigan suggests that some of the negative effects people can experience in retirement are tied to lifestyle changes such as being less active and social in the absence of work.

For some, the solution is to never give up work. Schmidt feels that even if there had been no need for him to make money after retiring, he still would've sought out a part-time job. With it, "I don't feel useless," he says. "I do work that feels like I'm really giving something to the community."

But returning to your old line of work is hardly the only way to stay emotionally and intellectually fulfilled in retirement.

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The idea that our personal worth is determined by how hard we work and how much money we make is deeply embedded in US work culture. This "Protestant work ethic" puts the responsibility of attaining a good quality of life and well-being on the worker — if you don't have the time or resources for leisure, it's because you haven't earned it. Or as Schmidt's father put it, "You're not worth anything if you're not working." This pernicious way of thinking prevents people from seeing purpose or value in life that doesn't involve working for a paycheck.

Meanwhile, more and more research suggests that a sense of purpose is a vital factor for health and happiness, especially in older age. "Higher purpose in life is associated with reduced risk of heart attacks and strokes," says Eric Kim, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. For adults older than 50, it's also associated with better grip strength and faster walking speed, better overall health, healthier habits, less loneliness, and a lower risk of depression.

So what does purpose outside a career look like? Paul Draper thinks he's figured it out.

There are a million fun things to do, but 99% of them are unsustainable to do as a career.

In August 2023, six months before he was set to retire from his job as an enterprise-software product manager, Draper, now 68, made a plan. He liked his job and felt satisfied leaving it behind, but he recognized he still had a lot of energy and wanted to learn new things and meet new people. He was already involved in volunteering — doing prison ministry and working with soup kitchens — but more than that, "I was interested in doing things that I didn't know anything about," he says.

Draper's first thought was to work at a hardware store. He was somewhat handy but wanted to learn more about home repair. So he did. He got a part-time job at his local big-box hardware store handling doors, windows, and staircases. "That was great," he says, "because all of a sudden I had to learn a lot" to be able to answer customers' questions and solve their problems.

The job was never meant to be a forever thing. After 10 months, it began to feel more monotonous and less like a learning opportunity, so Draper decided to move on. He plans to replicate that experience and pursue other areas of work he's fascinated by. "There's a company in my area that builds continuous transmissions for bicycles and e-bikes," he says. "I just want to intern there." His dream role, however, is to lead city tours on Segways.

Since Draper isn't worried about needing an income, he can focus on learning. "There are a million fun things to do, but 99% of them are unsustainable to do as a career," he says. He views retirement as his opportunity to experiment with that 99% without worrying about achievement, a career, and the general hustle. Plus, he says it's been fairly easy to find these gigs. "I have found that there's a lot of employers that love retirees," he says. "One, because they're good with people. Two, because they're very reliable for the time that they have them, and they're calm, and they work well with other employees."

Cascio has found that when helping clients bring purpose back into their lives in retirement, it can help to think about the "six arenas of life": work, relationships, leisure, personal growth, finances, and health. A lot of people have drawn their sense of purpose or identity from work, and they might want to continue doing so through jobs or volunteering in retirement, she says. But any of these arenas can be a source of purpose. "If you haven't attended to your health and that's something you want to improve in retirement, that can become a purpose," she says.

Some activities can provide purpose in several of those areas. Draper's various odd jobs mean that he's more physically active than he would be if he stayed at home, and he's constantly meeting new people. "I've heard of people's circles closing up, but I'm finding I interact with more people, and on a regular basis," he says. Both greater social interaction and increased physical activity are associated with happier and healthier aging.

Sometimes older adults have to first overcome the idea that because they are older they are limited.

Kim says retirees who aren't exercising, socializing, or pursuing a sense of purpose may have self-limiting beliefs and pessimistic views of aging. "I've met people who will say, 'I'm X years old, and people who are this age don't really exercise anymore,'" regardless of whether their bodies are capable, he says. Sometimes older adults have to first overcome the idea that because they are older they are limited. A well-known 2002 study — and much follow-up research — found that people with more positive views of aging lived longer than those with more negative views. Kim says it can be tough to surmount those limiting beliefs, especially in a society where aging is seen as something to be avoided. In reality, there's no expiration date for finding new sources of fulfillment.

Of course, some people are perfectly happy with a leisure-filled retirement. "If you're only golfing and watching TV and you don't feel like there's anything missing in your life, you're completely happy, then I wouldn't go and say there is a psychological reason why you need to go and volunteer for a cause you care about," says Yochai Shavit, the director of research at the Stanford Center on Longevity. If you live a life of leisure but are still bored, or if you're ignoring a sense of discontentment, that's when the trouble starts. "The risk I see is that people brush aside those feelings," he says.

There's no "one size fits all" formula to retirement, but experts like Shavit hope that more people approach retirement with the understanding that they still have the ability — and often the time — to find meaning and fulfillment. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that "boredom is a 'natural' part of retirement and having aches, both internally and physically, is just a part of growing old," Shavit says. They're not, and they don't have to be.

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Hannah Seo is a Korean-Canadian journalist based in Brooklyn, New York, who writes about health, climate, and social science.

• Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck views paranoia as a leadership superpower.
• Experts warn Beck's mindset may lead to burnout and a toxic work environment.
• Effective leadership requires resilience and fostering a culture of trust, workplace pros say.

Peter Beck doesn't sleep soundly and thinks paranoia is a "superpower."

The founder and CEO of the aerospace company Rocket Lab told CNBC in an interview that going home and sleeping soundly every night "just doesn't seem a tangible possibility."

He also described himself as a "chronic workaholic" and a "micromanager," and said he was "paranoid about everything, especially failure."

While some other leaders share Beck's views, workplace pros think it might be a recipe for burnout and stress.

Heather Lamb, a workplace well-being expert and author of "How Not to Be a People Pleaser," told Business Insider that while constantly being on your toes may feel like a way to stay sharp, this mentality "breeds a toxic work environment."

"Instead, constant stress and fear of falling short can inspire anxiety, self-doubt, and burnout that is damaging to productivity and well-being alike," she said.

A recipe for success?

Beck became the "newest space billionaire" in November, according to Forbes, with his 10% stake in Rocket Lab worth $970 million, and having accrued $65 million from selling shares.

The company is currently valued at $11.2 billion, according to CNBC.

Still, he is lagging behind other space entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk (worth $354 billion) with SpaceX and Jeff Bezos (worth $240 billion) with Blue Origin.

Rocket Lab's stock price surged to an all-time high at the end of November. While the company rivals Musk's SpaceX, Beck previously told BI he has no intention of colonizing Mars.

Instead, Rocket Lab focuses on building and managing rockets and satellites.

"Rocket Lab will never have the capital that Jeff and Elon have," Beck told Bloomberg News in an interview. "But all that means is you have to be a bit better at hustling, a little bit better at being innovative. You can't break the laws of physics no matter how much capital you've got."

Caution vs fear

Beck believes that his paranoia and micromanaging have helped his career.

In the short term, paranoia and a hyper-vigilant mindset can drive exceptional results, Edel Holliday-Quinn, a business psychologist who has worked in senior roles at Citi and PwC, told BI, especially in high-stakes industries like aerospace.

Breese Annable, a licensed clinical psychologist and career coach who has worked with many high-achieving professionals, also told BI that some level of alertness can be valuable for leaders.

"Anticipating challenges and planning for contingencies are facets of strategic thinking," she said. "However, when vigilance crosses into chronic hypervigilance, the psychological and relational costs outweigh the benefits."

Lamb told BI that leaders who are always anxious about the next misstep may lose sight of their own well-being.

"The world thrives on fear — yeah, people take pride in their work, for sure," she said. "Wanting to do good work is a fine goal. But if paranoia is at the heart of it, you are working to inhibit yourself rather than improve."

There's a difference between exercising caution and being immobilized with fear of failure, Lamb added.

"Realistic caution is the practice of thinking about the future, having contingency plans, and being mindful of all of the hurdles we face," she said. "But it's about managing those worries in a way that won't overwhelm you."

Negative impacts are individual and workplace-wide

Sleep deprivation significantly affects cognitive functioning, decision-making, and emotional regulation, Annable said, and if it is experienced long-term, it has been linked to higher risks of cardiovascular disease and weakened immune function.

Chronic stress can also have physiological effects by contributing to chronic illnesses like high blood pressure.

And it's not just the individual who is affected.

Worrying too much about the future can have a lasting impact on the workforce as well.

Leaders who are on edge and driven by failure are likely to be micromanagers, Holliday-Quinn said, which can create a toxic workplace culture.

"Research consistently shows that employees under micromanagers experience lower job satisfaction, decreased engagement, and higher turnover rates," Annable said. "This creates a ripple effect that can undermine long-term organizational success."

Over time, this can lead to high turnover and low employee happiness.

"Employees may feel disempowered, undervalued, and overly scrutinized," she said. "Which stifles creativity and collaboration."

True effective leadership, Holliday-Quinn said, requires "resilience, self-awareness, and the ability to foster a culture of trust, collaboration, and empowerment."

"These are the hallmarks of leaders who leave a lasting legacy," she said. "Not just in terms of success but in terms of the positive impact they have on their organizations and the people within them."

Beck didn't respond to a request for comment from BI.

Since the dawn of the generative AI era a few years ago, the march of technology—toward what tech companies hope will replace human intellectual labor—has continuously sparked angst about the future role humans will play in the job market. Will we all be replaced by machines?

A Y-Combinator-backed company called Artisan, which sells customer service and sales workflow software, recently launched a provocative billboard campaign in San Francisco playing on that angst, reports Gizmodo. It features the slogan "Stop Hiring Humans." The company markets its software products as "AI Employees" or "Artisans."

The company's billboards feature messages that might inspire nightmares among workers, like "Artisans won't complain about work-life balance" and "The era of AI employees is here." And they're on display to the same human workforce the ads suggest replacing.

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• It's looking like job market conditions will improve in 2025.
• Employees who are feeling burned out and dissatisfied may decide to "revenge quit."
• Bosses can prepare by focusing on empathy and meaningful communication.

With a job market heating up and employee resentment boiling over, "revenge quitting" looks to be on the horizon for 2025.

Edel Holliday-Quinn, a business psychologist, told Business Insider that some workers feel burned out and undervalued in part due to increased workloads and a back-and-forth about hybrid working.

In 2025, she said, many people are therefore thinking: "New year, new job."

"The job market is starting to loosen up, and for those who have been simmering with frustration, this might be the year they finally quit—not just quietly, but loudly," Holliday-Quinn said.

"Revenge quitting," she said, is where employees leave not just to move on "but to make a point."

Burnout and toxicity

Employment analysts previously told BI that the Great Detachment is plaguing workplaces and is one of the biggest challenges leaders face.

Partner that with the fact it might be easier to switch jobs next year, and employers could soon realize their best talent is jumping ship.

"If we as HR leaders don't act now, we do run the risk that a lot of those employees will just decide the opportunities are not there for them in the current company," Ciara Harrington, the Chief People Officer of the corporate training platform Skillsoft, told BI.

"Once the market opens up and they start getting the calls again, you could see an increase in your attrition," she said. "If any other employer wants this person, they're probably somebody you want to retain as well."

According to workplace experts, employees across all industries are increasingly engaging in "productivity theater" and performative busyness to get through their workday, and the workforce as a whole is disengaged.

They're struggling in other ways, too. For the ninth year in a row, the employee benefits platform Businessolver surveyed 20,000 employees, HR professionals, and CEOs across six industries on the state of workplace empathy. The report found that 42% of all respondents and 52% of CEOs reported working in a toxic environment.

In 2023, people were "rage applying" for jobs, angrily scrolling through job ads when they were fed up. Revenge quitting is similar, with the added vengeance of moving on to something better.

Stretched too thin

Beth Hood, the founder and CEO of the leadership and management training platform Verosa, told BI that employee dissatisfaction "rarely stems from a single event."

"It's often a gradual erosion of 'intrinsic motivators' such as connection, meaning, and safety," Hood said. "When these motivators are left unmet, resentment and detachment can grow, eventually leading to employees walking away, often in frustration or as a way of reclaiming control."

Holliday-Quinn, who has worked in senior roles at Citi and PwC, said employees have reported being stretched thin, due to cuts and heavier workloads, made worse by the attack on middle managers.

"Dissatisfaction has been quietly brewing," Holliday-Quinn said, with a period of layoffs and RTO mandates.

"This disconnect between leadership and the workforce isn't just a communication issue," she said. "It's a retention crisis waiting to happen."

Generational dynamics are also at play, with Gen Zers being skeptical about climbing the corporate ladder for little payoff. Younger workers are "less willing to tolerate outdated workplace cultures or rigid hierarchies," said Holliday-Quinn.

"Companies that don't adapt to these expectations will struggle to retain the next wave of talent," she said.

How to prepare

Harrington told BI that company leaders need to be trained to have crucial conversations with their direct reports because "most team members leave a manager, not a company."

The Businessolver report found that while 55% of CEOs believe they lead with empathy at work, only 28% of employees actually agreed.

Harrington said listening goes a long way, as does filtering down information from above effectively.

"I'm a really big believer in investing in leaders really is investing in the company as a whole," she said. "Because if they're doing their job, they're going to be working on the individual team member engagement, retention, and motivation."

Harrington said if an employee has been treated with empathy and felt heard in their current role, they're more likely to help with the transition or stay longer to meet deadlines during their notice period rather than being checked out and unhelpful.

"You're much more likely to get that really helpful and good transition," Harrington said. "Which will help massively with business continuity.

For others, though, "revenge quitting" could impact them greatly.

"2025 is shaping up to be a wake-up call for employers," Holliday-Quinn said. "Those who have relied on control over connection or ignored the mounting dissatisfaction within their teams are about to face the consequences."

• A Pew Research Center analysis shows the largest occupations for young US workers without degrees.
• Men often work as drivers or in construction, while women work in customer service or nursing roles.
• College enrollment rates have declined in recent years.

Customer service representatives and truck drivers are the most common jobs for young women and men without a four-year degree, respectively.

Men and women between the ages of 25 and 34 who don't have college degrees also work as construction laborers, health aides, cashiers, and chefs, per a Pew Research Center analysis published in July.

There was little overlap in the most common jobs for young men and women without a college degree, but the two groups did share two roles: first-line supervisors of sales workers and retail salespersons.

Roles like these have become particularly prevalent for men, whose college enrollment rates have fallen behind women's in recent years.

Forty-seven percent of US women between the ages of 25 and 34 have a bachelor's degree compared to 37% of men, per a Pew analysis published in November. However, overall college enrollment rates have fallen in recent years: The share of male high school graduates between the ages of 16 and 24 enrolling in college has declined to 58% as of 2023 from 67% in 2018, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Young women's enrollment rate has declined to 65% from 71% over this period.

Many of these young people are seeking jobs that don't require a college degree, and some have benefited from companies dropping degree requirements. The share of US job postings that require at least a college degree has fallen to 17.8% from 20.4% in 2019, according to an Indeed report published earlier this year. To be sure, many employers still prioritize hiring workers with a college diploma.

The Pew report published in July also highlighted the most common job categories for Americans with a four-year college degree. Four occupation categories were among the 10 most common jobs for both men and women: software developers, managers, accountants and auditors, and elementary and middle school teachers.

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California’s unemployment insurance (UI) financing system is facing big deficits, requiring a full "redesign," according to a new report from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO).

The system, meant to be self-sufficient, has fallen short of covering annual benefit costs, resulting in a projected $2 billion annual deficit over the next five years and an outstanding $20 billion federal loan balance.

"This outlook is unprecedented: although the state has, in the past, failed to build robust reserves during periods of economic growth, it has never before run persistent deficits during one of these periods," the LAO report, titled "Fixing Unemployment Insurance" and published Tuesday, stated. 

NEWSOM PROPOSES $25M FROM STATE LEGISLATURE TO ‘TRUMP PROOF’ CALIFORNIA

Independent analysts project that annual shortfalls will increase California's federal loan, costing taxpayers around $1 billion in interest each year. The system, which is funded by employer payments to the UI Trust Fund, hasn’t been updated since 1984 and "cannot keep up with inflation or provide the intended wage replacement of half of workers’ wages," according to the report.

The current employer tax structure discourages eligible unemployed workers from claiming benefits, while the state’s low taxable wage base hampers hiring of lower-wage workers, analysts found.

One suggestion researchers wrote to fix the gap is to increase the amount of wages taxed for unemployment benefits, raising it from $7,000 per worker to $46,800. Supporters of this change say it would bring in more money to fund the program. The report also recommends reworking how businesses are taxed for unemployment benefits to make the system simpler and encourage more hiring.

PROPOSITION 36 OVERWHELMINGLY PASSES IN CALIFORNIA, REVERSING SOME SOROS-BACKED SOFT-ON-CRIME POLICIES

To deal with the massive federal loan, the report suggests splitting the cost between employers and the state government, so that businesses aren’t stuck with all the debt.

"These are significant problems in isolation, let alone in combination," analysts wrote. "The significant changes proposed in this report are an honest reflection of these problems. However, whether or not the Legislature takes action, employers will soon pay more in UI taxes than they do today due to escalating charges under federal law."

Gareth Lacy, a spokesperson for the California Employment Development Department, which administers the state’s unemployment insurance program, called it "a thoughtful report" and noted officials "are reviewing it carefully."

"We agree the issue stretches back for decades and the pandemic compounded it," Lacy told Fox News Digital in a statement.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the state's UI system was hit hard with an overwhelming number of unemployment claims, resulting in the state borrowing roughly $20 billion from the federal government to cover insurance benefits, which the state still owes. 

"Not only will the state’s tax system fall short of repaying that loan, the balance is set to grow due to the ongoing gap between contributions and benefits," the report noted. "This will become a near-permanent feature of the state’s UI program and a major ongoing cost for state taxpayers."

Over the past two years, American businesses have been engaged in a rapid-fire restructuring of their corporate hierarchies. In the name of "flattening," they've been waging war on middle managers — trimming an entire tier of supervisory jobs that Mark Zuckerberg derided as nothing more than "managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work." Following Meta's lead, Citi reduced its 13 layers of management to eight. UPS axed 12,000 of its 85,000 managers. And in September, Amazon announced plans to increase its ratio of workers to supervisors by at least 15%. "I hate bureaucracy," CEO Andy Jassy declared, echoing the zeal for "efficiency" that Elon Musk, one of the pioneers of the current corporate flattening, is now seeking to unleash on the halls of government.

But here's the thing: It's not just that tens of thousands of middle managers have lost their jobs. It's that the jobs themselves have been eliminated — and they may not be coming back.

To test that theory, I asked Revelio Labs, a workforce analytics provider, to crunch the numbers for me, using its database of job postings aggregated from across the internet. It divided employees into two buckets of managers (senior leadership and middle management) and two buckets of lower-level employees (experienced associates and junior workers). Then it looked at how many job openings employers are posting today, compared with the hiring heyday of 2022.

What the data reveals is stark. Earlier this year, when white-collar hiring was at its lowest point, openings for junior roles — entry-level positions requiring little to no prior experience — were down by 14%. But hiring had plunged by 43% for middle managers and 57% for senior leaders. If you had any sort of management experience, your job prospects were bleak.

Since then, though, we've seen a significant rebound in job postings for almost everyone — except middle managers. In October, employers were still advertising 42% fewer middle-management positions than they did in April 2022. Which means that those who lost their jobs in the Great Flattening are now facing a whole new horror: There aren't any positions left for them to take.

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The assault on middle managers dates back to the 1980s, when globalization gave rise to a new philosophy of management that prioritized cost cutting over everything else. Supervisors — earning big salaries for rubber-stamping the work of their subordinates — became an easy target. Trim the fat, the thinking went, and the efficiencies will follow. From 1986 to 1998, one study found, the number of managers reporting to division heads dropped by 25%. At the same time, the number of managers reporting directly to a CEO nearly doubled.

Executives got the flattening that they wanted. But it's unclear whether getting rid of middle managers actually made companies run more efficiently. As I wrote last year, one study found that businesses with fewer layers of management were able to deliver their products faster. But study after study found that when middle managers do their jobs right, they bolster performance more than either top executives or ground-level employees. Supervisors do real work. They motivate. They mentor. They communicate critical information to and from different parts of the company. They smooth out glitches and spot opportunities. They're the ones who keep the trains running.

But now is an especially bad time to be an experienced supervisor. According to an analysis by Live Data Technologies, another workforce analytics provider, middle managers made up 32% of layoffs last year, compared with 20% in 2019. And as the data from Revelio Labs shows, companies appear to have no intention of refilling those supervisory roles, even as they resume hiring for lower-level jobs. That has created a double whammy for middle managers: There's a sharp spike in job seekers, and they're competing for an increasingly small universe of open roles.

Over the past year I've heard from hundreds of managers mired in this double whammy. What's struck me is how eerily similar their stories are. They all come across as smart and articulate. They're all in their late 40s to 50s. When they got laid off from their supervisory jobs, they didn't expect their job search to be too difficult. After all, they'd spent decades honing their skills and climbing the corporate ladder, often at leading companies. Surely, all that experience had to count for something. But despite sending out hundreds of applications, they can't get anyone to return their calls. They're utterly baffled, and they all have the same question: What is going on here?

It's only after seeing the data that I finally understand what's going on: There just aren't enough supervisory jobs to go around.

It's the question I've been asking, too — combing through government data, talking to employers and economists, studying applicant-tracking systems. Because so many of the frustrated job seekers are older, I thought maybe we were seeing some new form of age discrimination: Call it the Curse of the Gen X Professional. But it's only after seeing the data from Revelio Labs that I finally understand what's going on: There just aren't enough supervisory jobs to go around anymore.

In response, many displaced managers have swallowed their pride and started applying to jobs lower on the corporate food chain. As Revelio Labs' data shows, nonmanagerial jobs are faring much better these days — and you'd think companies would be thrilled to get the experience and know-how of seasoned professionals on the cheap. But take the example of a former middle manager I'll call Rick, who is 54. After getting rejected for all the supervisory jobs he could find, he widened his search to include entry-level positions — only to be rejected for being overqualified.

At this point, all Rick wants is a chance to prove himself. "Forget the titles, forget all that other stuff," he told me. "I just need a job. My unemployment runs out in about 30 days. I'll come in and do a great job for you."

This is the paradox that lies at the heart of the Great Flattening: The very experience that should be a selling point for senior leaders has become a liability. Some have tried deleting former jobs from their resumes, to hide their supervisory experience. Others, like Rick, omit the year they graduated from college. One former chief operating officer, whose search has gone so poorly that she's now applying to be an executive assistant, told me she addresses her overqualified-ness in her cover letters. "I understand that my résumé has some big titles on it, but let me tell you who I am at heart," she writes. "I really want to be doing this, and I'm not wedded to the title."

What all the out-of-work managers want to know is: When is the hiring freeze for supervisors going to thaw? That depends, in large part, on whether companies come to view the flattening as a success. Many CEOs insist they aren't getting rid of middle managers just to save money. They think having fewer layers of management will, as Zuckerberg put it, create a "stronger" company that can build "higher-quality products faster." That hints at a dark prospect for managers like Rick: The rung of the corporate ladder they spent their careers reaching could be gone for good.

There's a chance, of course, that the current craze for corporate flattening could ease over time. Companies are already discovering that having few middle managers is placing an enormous strain on their operations. The supervisors who survived the purge have been forced to take on much larger teams, and they're burned out to a crisp. Gen Zers, deprived of their mentors, are increasingly disengaged. Departments are more siloed than ever, with no one to do the tedious and thankless and essential work of coordinating across different teams. The best hope for managers like Rick is that CEOs are getting a real-time refresher in the value of managers.

"I'm not at that point in my life where I'm ready to take that step back," Rick told me. "I just want to work with good people and enjoy what I'm doing. I could go to Domino's and start delivering pizza. But I know I can do a lot more than that."

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Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.

• Andrea, 64, faces a tough choice after a layoff: find a job or start collecting Social Security.
• Many older Americans rely on Social Security in retirement and struggle to pay their bills.
• About 13% of baby boomers on LinkedIn "unretired" in 2023, a five-year high.

When Andrea, 64, was laid off in February, she joined the ranks of many older Americans who unexpectedly find themselves looking to rejoin the job market.

She spent decades climbing the corporate ladder at various staffing and recruitment firms in Minnesota's Twin Cities, taking on leadership roles and earning a six-figure salary. She had planned to keep working until she reached retirement age at 67.

Now, Andrea — whose identity is known to Business Insider but requested to use her first name for privacy — is weighing her options. She thinks about taking Social Security benefits earlier than she initially thought, but she's worried about long-term savings and would prefer to land another role.

"I would have to really make some big paradigm shifts in my life in order to not dig into my retirement," she said. "I would have to become super frugal, and I would rather work."

Decisions about when to stop working and take Social Security have become a cornerstone of the retirement experience. Older Americans are eligible to take Social Security at age 62, or they can wait until their full benefit amount kicks in at age 67. Monthly Social Security checks, which averaged $1,924.35 in October, are many baby boomers' main source of retirement income. But that's often not enough unless it's supplemented with other savings, like a 401(k) or investments.

Business Insider has heard from over 1,000 baby boomers about their retirement regrets. Many wished they had waited to receive their maximum Social Security benefit, while others retired early for reasons outside their control. For people like Andrea, a late-career layoff can derail their best-laid financial plans.

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Social Security may not cover all of Andrea's expenses

With her looming retirement decision, Andrea feels like she's "walking a tightrope" between starting her retirement and potentially outliving her savings. She said her husband, who is a retired attorney, receives several thousand dollars a month between his Social Security checks and pension. Andrea estimates her benefit check would be a little over $2,000 a month if she retired now — and she doesn't think it's enough to live on.

She said that paying for her family's mortgage, insurance, car payments, healthcare, and 24-year-old son's college tuition adds up quickly. She and her husband don't want to dip into their 401(k), Roth IRA, or investment accounts until absolutely necessary.

Doug Ornstein, director of wealth management at TIAA, told BI that unexpected costs or layoffs are a common source of financial anxiety for hopeful retirees.

"Most folks' biggest fear is running out of money and not having the dignity of being able to support themselves in their old age," Ornstein said.

About 13% of baby boomers on LinkedIn returned to the workforce, or "unretired," in 2023, a five-year high, per LinkedIn's Economic Graph. A Federal Reserve analysis of its 2020 US household economics and decision-making survey reported that 14% of non-retired adults who experience a layoff borrow or cash out funds from their retirement savings.

Andrea wishes she knew that her choice to be a stay-at-home parent while her son was a toddler — as well as work in the United Kingdom for 10 years earlier in her career — would negatively impact her Social Security earnings. The benefits only account for years actively spent in the US workforce.

She added that workplace ageism is making it difficult for her to be hired again, despite her years of experience. She hopes landing another role will help her round out the roughly $5 million she wants to have saved to retire comfortably.

Andrea advises others to begin saving for retirement in their 20s and 30s.

"Even when I do land a new job, I will save as much of that income as I possibly can," she said. "Because I don't feel that my position is as strong as it should be."

Have you had to return to work after retirement? Are you comfortable sharing your experience with a reporter? If so, reach out to [email protected].

• Silicon Valley has a long history with psychedelics, and some of its leaders have partaken.
• Apple cofounder Steve Jobs and OpenAI's Sam Altman have talked publicly about their experiences.
• Google cofounder Sergey Brin has reportedly used magic mushrooms and funded a startup for psychedelic treatments.

Some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley have dabbled in psychedelics.

The psychedelic movement isn't limited to the most successful tech moguls in Silicon Valley. A rising number of entrepreneurs and executives are turning to psychedelics like LSD, ayahuasca, and MDMA to find inspiration in their professional lives.

While psychedelics haven't reached mainstream status, they're gaining popularity in certain circles. Startups focused on psychedelics are also drawing increasing interest and investment from prominent figures, including startup accelerators like Y Combinator and billionaires such as Peter Thiel.

Here's what we know about the Big Tech billionaires and founders who have dabbled with psychedelic drugs or similar substances.