Investors are jittery about the future of the labor market — and workers are feeling the uncertainty, too.
Americans are more pessimistic than they were a year ago about their chances of holding onto their jobs, according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Workers’ average expected likelihood of losing their job in the next four months rose to 4.4% in July, up from 3.9% during the same month last year. That’s the highest level since the Fed started collecting the data in 2014, researchers said. The survey also showed a sharp increase in the number of job seekers. The share of respondents who said they had searched for a job in the last month increased to 28.4%, the highest level since March 2014.
Workers are less happy with their current jobs, as well: Satisfaction with wages, benefits, and promotion opportunities decreased.
The job market has cooled significantly since the pandemic left many businesses scrounging for workers in 2022 and 2023. Many employees won huge raises and switched jobs as companies struggled to fill roles.
But that red-hot labor market is long over. A weaker-than-expected jobs report for July stirred concerns about the U.S. economy and helped contribute to a stock-market selloff earlier this month.
A slowing labor market
The New York Fed report isn’t the only indicator of workers’ lingering pessimism about the U.S. job market.
Glassdoor’s employee-confidence index remains significantly below its 2022 levels. The index, which measures the share of workers who report a positive six-month business outlook for their employers, was 48.1% in July.
An “overwhelming sense of burnout” might explain the dip, Glassdoor’s lead economist, Daniel Zhao, wrote in a post about the data. The number of company reviews on the site mentioning burnout surged during the pandemic and has remained elevated. “During the labor shortages era, burned-out workers bore the brunt of being short-staffed,” Zhao wrote. “And now, even as workloads have normalized, many employers have pulled back on hiring, leaving many teams stretched thin.”
Corporate layoffs have likely helped contribute to the decrease in worker confidence. For example, car manufacturer General Motors said Monday that it would slash about 1,000 jobs in its software and services division.
The layoff rate across the economy remains low, but the U.S. unemployment rate rose by more than expected last month, to 4.3%.
For a few glorious months in my early twenties, I occasionally got to ride on the back of a Harley-Davidson Fat Boy. My roommate Don owned it and would sometimes drive me to a Toronto biker bar to have drinks with his boyfriend, who also owned a Fat Boy. From that limited experience, I presumed Harley embraced diversity.
On Monday, Harley-Davidson posted a statement on X to tell the world that it’s backing away from policies like “supplier diversity spend goals” to “better align” with its customers. “Saddened” by the backlash initiated by activist Robbie Starbuck who has pushed Harley, John Deere, and Tractor Supply to ditch DEI initiatives in recent weeks, it capitulated.
Are brands like Harley really turning their backs on diversity or, as several CEOs have told me, deciding to stop talking about it? Harley distanced itself from DEI on a social media site where it had faced much of the ‘anti-woke’ wrath. On the Harley website, there was language about inclusion but no statement like the one posted on X. A brand beloved by biker gangs and wealthy weekend warriors clearly wants to woo everyone in the face of falling motorcycle sales.
Diversity is good for business. Angry customers are not. Those who dislike companies pushing DEI policies are not all right-wing extremists or racists, any more than those who push companies to take a stance on DEI are all left-wing extremists or doctrinaire. Miscommunication is rife. And Harley’s recent decision to move some of its production to Thailand—in part to skirt retaliatory tariffs because of import restrictions imposed by Biden and Trump—didn’t help it win fans.
The question is how to deal with it. For investors, betting against companies taking action on social issues has proven to be a losing strategy, according to a recent Yale study. As a platform for brand positioning and customer engagement, X is inadequate. Why engage with your most inflammatory critics when you could control the message on your website or with direct communication with core customers?
Consumers want to see themselves in the brands they buy. I drink Bud Light, for example, and I support LGBTQ+ rights. What bothered me about Dylan Mulvaney’s commercial (vs. this one) was the apparent disdain for March Madness during March Madness. For a basketball fan, it’s a bad commercial, regardless of your stance on transgender rights.
Some leaders like TruStage CEO Terrance Williams argue that some issues are too important to sideline or hide in silence. As a $5 billion-a-year insurer distributing products through credit union partners, addressing inequity is core to his company’s business model. “We have to acknowledge bias to ensure that we never repeat it,” he says. “There are real societal impacts, so we have to address them… Some may disagree and I welcome that disagreement. I welcome the dialogue because it means we are talking to each other.”
Too often we make the mistake of thinking attending a workshop or getting a certification is career development. In reality, it’s just one part of the equation. This is important to understand if you are developing your own career and trying to get the company you work for to invest in your growth and development. It’s equally as important if you are the people manager or senior executive developing others.
To understand all elements of the development equation and ensure you get the most out of your efforts, you can reference the 70:20:10 model created in the 1980s by Morgan McCall, Michael M. Lombardo, and Robert A. Eichinger, researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina.
They asked 191 executives to self-report on how they believe they learned: “Please identify at least three key events in your career, things that made a difference in the way you manage now.” The results suggested that 70% of learning came from challenging job assignments or experience on the job. 20% came from developmental relationships or exposure to how others do things or feedback on how you may be performing. These two types of learning are often labeled as informal learning.
The surprising result was that the remaining 10% was a result of what we usually consider formal learning or structured development programs. All the workshops, certifications, and learning series you may have attended or have sent your employees to attend had a small slice of a person’s development of new skills or capabilities.
Does that mean we should all stop engaging in formal learning and education? Absolutely not. In fact, many have criticized this model and picked apart whether these percentages are the right numbers.
Instead of getting too caught up in the percentages and how accurate they may be, it’s maybe more important to understand what role each part of the 70:20:10 model plays in development and how to use them to evolve your skills or the skills of others.
To use this model to effectively plan for development, you’ll need to switch the order a bit and focus on building towards making an impact on the company or organization that is investing in the development.
The Role Experience (70%)
When putting a development plan together, start with the end in mind. The 70% represents the end result. It’s the impact or outcome of investing in development.
The 70% should be seen as the outcome or goal of any development effort. What new experience or responsibility are we building towards? This is where the organization paying for development efforts realizes its return on investment. What will the individual being developed be able to do that they are not currently able to do to help the organization achieve its goals?Read More
For career building, this is a critical piece to get clear on. It helps to create a meaningful business case for why the company should pay for and sponsor your further development. It also can help you build demand for the type of work you ultimately want to be doing.
As a manager, getting clear on what individuals will be doing with the training and support you provide can help you ensure your team is effective at meeting its goals. It can also help you make the case for critical resources and investment in the team’s overall evolution. Often, development efforts fall dead in an email chain because there is no tangible and credible business case to back it. It’s not about sending your team to a conference. It’s about what your team will be doing for the company with what they’ve learned once they are back from that conference.
An example may be launching a new program, adding cross-functional capability to the team, or modernizing out-of-date or inefficient processes. The individual would take on delivering this end result, putting them in the driver’s seat. When it comes to learning, we learn a lot more by actually driving than we do by sitting in the passenger seat.
The Role of Education (10%)
Next, you’ll want to examine what skill or capability you or the person you’re developing lacks to be able to fully take on the work described in the 70% Experience section. This can include needing to learn a new way of thinking, acumen at using a different tool or technology, or even building credibility with a new audience.
The goal should be to identify the need and then determine the formal education needed to gain the foundation of that skill. This can be through courses, certifications, seminars or even shadowing and mentoring. It’s all about the individual being developed getting and absorbing new information.
This is often seen as the whole of development when it is really just the beginning stage. But if it’s not tied to an end goal the education may never get applied and the learning is often forgotten by the student. This is very common in professional settings. Managers will send their employees to a workshop and then feel like the development box has been checked. This lack of real impact is also why development is often not seen as having a tangible or reliable return on investment.
The Role of Exposure (20%)
Finally, you’ll want to explore how to connect what’s learned through formal educational events to the ability to be applied on the job through informal experience. This is where the role of exposure comes in. This is the opportunity for the individual to practice what they’ve learned, watch it being modeled within the workplace, and receive feedback on how well they are demonstrating the new skill or capability. If the education is the foundation, exposure is the glue.
This is the element that is often completely skipped over. The idea of many workplaces is that someone should go to a class and come back ready to apply and do what they’ve learned with a level of expertise. But just like learning to walk or ride a bike, we need a safe space to practice, fall and continue to get back up and try again.
The learning curve here can be strengthened by ensuring the company and team culture invites, reinforces, and celebrates the messiness of this chapter in learning. Mistakes are not the enemy here. In fact, mistakes can be what speeds up the learning process.
Research from Johns Hopkins University reveals that making mistakes during a learning task can actually lead to faster learning. When individuals make mistakes, their brains not only remember the correct information better but also learn faster from those errors, even in completely different tasks. This enhanced memory of errors helps the brain generalize from one task to another, making it more likely to retain and apply the correct information in future situations.
Creating development plans that are created in the order of 70:10:20 and then implemented as 10:20:70 end up drawing and building upon the elements of formal and informal learning in ways that ensure that the individual can positively impact their careers, as well as the capabilities of the organization t