The year 2025 is about to come to an end. Thank goodness, some would say.

On the good side, Unemployment stayed relatively stable, and under the level of full employment. The US economy DID add a significant number of jobs in 2025, just not as many as in each of the last couple of years, and not as many as we thought, but then we don’t really know, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn’t really functioned since the government shutdown.

But, if you talk to people, and I do – the tide has turned, and the job market is NOT the fun place for job seekers it had been for the past few years.

So let’s look at where we are in the World of Work at the end of 2025.

1. The word of the year is uncertainty. The tariffs and turmoil in Washington have made it impossible to predict things based on what has always been. Employers don’t like uncertainty.
2. Today it’s a matter of skills scarcity vs talent shortage. Right now, we don’t have as much of a people shortage as we have a skills mismatch.
3. Workforce flexibility is on the rise. The old Return to Office vs Work from Home brawl has cooled, and in its place is a more nuanced landscape, but workers are still asserting their desire for more control, not necessarily just remote work. Things like shift flexibility are on the rise. Some companies have experimented with something called output-based scheduling, which simply means we’re going to measure what you actually accomplish, rather than the time you appear to be “on duty”.
4. AI remains the greatest unknown. Most employers haven’t yet read the manual on how to work it, so they’re “experimenting”, many without the guardrails that wisdom would recommend. Some will use it to slash their workforces. They may live to regret that. Others will deploy AI to make work better. And some will shift part of the workforce from whatever they’re doing now to AI Development. Still others will miss the boat entirely. Like I said, it’s a great unknown.
5. There’s a Renewed Focus on Leadership Visibility and Trust – maybe not in your place of work – but in many. Some leaders are figuring out that they have to get out there and be seen if they want to maximize their leadership effectiveness.
6. The Psychological Contract at work has changed – some would say not for the better. Many workers now view their jobs as a short-term mutual value exchange rather than a long-term commitment. And let’s face it – employers, for the most part, have created that monster. Turnover has stabilized. But let’s not kid ourselves, it’s not because of increased loyalty.
7. But some things never change – the companies that won the best talent in 2025 are those that treated people not as “headcount” but as customers of the workplace experience.

So hang onto your hats – 2026 is just around the corner. Can’t wait to see what it holds for the new world of work.

Happy New Year everybody!