2025 marks a quarter of a century gone by. So far, the 21st century has been marked by rapid technological advances and growth in the tech industry, a long but slow economic recovery in the 2010s, and a global pandemic starting at the top of the 2020s.

Those trends have shaken up how we experience worklife: tech’s growth set off a race for talent that in the 2010s meant flashy offices and perks; the pandemic triggered a radical shift to remote work; and new communication platforms now keep us more connected to our coworkers and wider professional networks than ever before.

As we turn the page from 2024 to 2025, questions about the health of the job market are front and center. The pandemic era of labor shortages and the Great Resignation are fully in the rearview mirror and despite resilient headline economic indicators, many workers don’t feel like the job market is working for them. That angst is founded in the stagnation that many workers are feeling in their careers right now as hiring slows. Workers are grappling with the consequences of this stagnation and finding ways to circumvent it, while managers and leaders are looking for ways to engage workers in this new era.

How are workers and leaders alike feeling as we head into 2025? Here are the 5 worklife trends we expect to see in 2025 and beyond, drawn from Glassdoor’s unique data.

Trend 1: Employees’ pent-up resentment will boil over
Trend 2: Falling down the career ladder will stunt pay and career growth for workers
Trend 3: Gen Z will make up 1 in 10 managers in 2025
Trend 4: Side hustle culture fuels new paths to career growth
Trend 5: Employers are investing in holistic wellbeing
On the horizon: Rising worklife themes
Methodology

Trend 1: Employees’ pent-up resentment will boil over

Workers are increasingly feeling stuck in their careers as a soft job market with sluggish hiring means more are forced to sit tight instead of moving onto new jobs that offer better growth opportunities and pay.

In a poll of professionals on Glassdoor, almost 2 in 3 (65%) report feeling “stuck” in their current roles. In particular, 73% of respondents in tech report feeling “stuck” and 68% of women compared to 62% of men.

This is borne out in hard economic data as well. The share of U.S. workers who quit their jobs fell to 1.9% in September 2024, the first time below the 2% mark since June 2020 and consistent with levels last seen in 2015 (excluding the onset of Covid).

It’s no accident that trends like “quiet quitting” are resonating now. As workers feel stuck, pent-up resentment boils under the surface and employee disengagement rises. Indeed, Glassdoor ratings have drifted downwards over the last few years, with career opportunities ratings falling modestly to 3.67 in 2024 from 3.79 in 2022, a 3% drop. As layoffs struck white-collar industries over the last two years, places that have seen the largest declines in career opportunities ratings include information technology (-7.5%), pharmaceutical & biotechnology (-7%), and media & communication (-5.8%).

In the new year, the pressure from this resentment is going to keep growing. The longer the job market remains soft, the more workers are forced to stay even if it’s time for them to move on. Once the job market heats up again, that will open a relief valve to release the bottled up pressure, by giving workers the option to quit in favor of better options on the market. For the time being, employers may be benefiting from unusually low turnover rates, but they shouldn’t be complacent—a wave of revenge quitting is on the horizon.

Trend 2: Falling down the career ladder will stunt pay and career growth for workers

As the job market has cooled, more workers have slipped down the career ladder. Workers who have lost their jobs or had to switch jobs due to life circumstances have found a sluggish job market, which gives them fewer options and less negotiating power. As a result, many workers have had to settle for lower pay or a lower job level. 

Based on Glassdoor pay data, 17% of workers who changed employers indicated that their pay actually declined in 2024, up from 15% in 2023 and 14% back in 2019. In particular, tech has seen the largest increase in pay drops, going from 11% in 2019 to 18% in 2024.

Pay drops have been more severe for managers. As businesses have targeted middle management for layoffs and budget cuts, more managers are having to take a pay cut or step down in level as they get a new job. 22% of managers who switched employers in 2024 saw a pay drop, and this was even more severe for former managers who have had to make the switch to a non-manager job (going from 28% in 2019 to 32% in 2024). In other words, almost 1 in 3 of managers who switched to a non-manager job at a new employer saw their pay decline.

Falling down the career ladder risks injury in the form of lower pay in the short run. However, those injuries can also become chronic if they result in fewer opportunities to keep skills sharp and create difficulty skipping back up the ladder once the job market heats up again. That could lead to a permanently lower trajectory of pay and career growth for laid off workers, just like the 2008 recession led to long-term scarring.

Career setbacks have created a traffic jam at the bottom of the ladder, with middle managers now competing in the same pool of jobs as frontline managers and experienced employees in the same pool as new grads. Even if hiring picks back up in 2025, it will likely still be a tough job market for entry level and less experienced workers who will have to wait for their more experienced peers to move up first.

Trend 3: Gen Z will make up 1 in 10 managers in 2025

The kids are all grown up. In 2025, the oldest members of Gen Z will be 28 with almost a decade in the workforce. Gen Z already makes up just under 20% of the workforce, but as Gen Z ages, they’re also quickly entering the ranks of management. Based on current trends, one in ten managers in 2025 will be a member of Gen Z.

Gen Z is on track to follow their older peers into the ranks of management. When comparing against previous generations when they were at the same age, Gen Z behaves very similarly to past generations. For example, 14% of Gen Z workers age 27 are managers, essentially the same percentage as Millennial (13%), Gen X (14%) and Baby Boomer (12%) workers when they were age 27.

This is a useful reminder that generational differences are often overstated. The youngest members of the workforce often behave differently because of their age not because of their generation (for example, younger workers are likely to switch jobs as they are not settled into their careers, not because of changes in generational attitudes toward loyalty).

That being said, there are some ways that management and leadership styles have shifted over the last five years, and the entry of Gen Z into the management ranks is likely to accompany this different leadership style.

For example, when we look at Glassdoor reviews that discuss leadership or management, a few themes emerge. Terms like wellbeing and empathy are increasingly mentioned, with 222% and 76% increases in mentions, respectively, from 2019 to 2024, as employees look for leaders that are able to empathize with their needs. Similarly, mentions of boundaries (+99%) and burnout (+126%) have surged as workers feel overwhelmed. In turbulent times, employees also expect their leaders to help provide clarity (+52%) and address uncertainty (+45%). Lastly, equity (+41%) and inclusion (+76%) are increasingly important topics, especially for younger workers.

Ultimately, much ink has been spilled on how Gen Z workers are different, but as members of Gen Z age into the management ranks, it is time to start thinking about how Gen Z’s management style will mirror or differ from previous generations.

Trend 4: Side hustle culture fuels new paths to career growth

Workers are continuing to look for career success, even if they have to look for nontraditional paths. As hiring has cooled over the last few years but the economy and consumer spending have held up, many Americans have turned to entrepreneurship and side hustles. A 2024 Glassdoor-Harris poll found that 39% of employees have a side hustle to supplement their income, rising to 57% for Gen Z and 48% of Millennials.

Over the course of the pandemic, we have seen a resurgence in entrepreneurship and self-employment. New business applications, for example, have surged 47%, rising from 293,000 a month in 2019 to 431,000 a month in 2024.

And overall, American hustle culture is still going strong, even if some workers are growing disillusioned with the traditional corporate path. Indeed, the tired myth that “nobody wants to work anymore” could not be further from the truth as the working age labor force participation rate reached 84% in July 2024, the highest level in over two decades. Over the last year, this share has been boosted by workers of all types—workers sticking to corporate jobs, but also more workers testing side hustles while keeping their main job for security as well as those starting their own businesses.

Additionally, the prevalence of social media and influencers mean young Americans are exposed regularly to a new type of side hustle such as content creation that barely existed a decade ago. Not everybody is going to be an influencer, but the social media natives are more connected online than ever and comfortable leveraging social media for networking and unlocking new income streams.

Based on our data, the death of hustle culture has been greatly exaggerated. Looking into 2025, workers will continue to pursue career growth through side hustles as nontraditional options like entrepreneurship and gig work proliferate.

Trend 5: Employers are investing in holistic wellbeing

Employers today are more tapped into the importance of the holistic wellbeing of their employees. That has evolved over the decades from offering health care insurance and retirement plans to the modern day, where employers are increasingly offering benefits like mental health care coverage.

Mental health care coverage is a good example of the evolving picture of benefits for holistic wellbeing, responding to a real need from employees: almost half (48%) of employees agree that it’s more difficult for them to prioritize their mental health at work compared to 5 years ago, according to a 2024 Glassdoor-Harris poll. That figure rises to almost two-thirds (64%) for workers aged 18-34.

To meet this need, employers have rapidly expanded access to mental health care coverage. On Glassdoor, employees have reported a 18 percentage point increase in access to mental health care benefits from 2019 to 2024, the second largest increase of any benefit (behind access to work from home options due to the pandemic). 

Employers have also been broadening their care benefit offerings in pursuit of holistic wellbeing with other benefits like parental leave (+12pp), family medical leave (+9pp), bereavement leave (+9pp) in the top 10 benefits with the largest increase in access. Particularly for workers today who are part of the sandwich generation—taking care of both children and parents—care benefits are an important offering. 

Even as companies have tightened benefit budgets as the economy has slowed, coverage for these newer benefits has expanded. A more holistic approach to benefits can help keep employees engaged and focused on work. And offering a wide variety of less common benefits may give employers an opportunity to differentiate themselves to job seekers.

On the horizon: Rising worklife themes

Every trend starts as a single anecdote. Below are a few posts and data points we noticed gaining momentum in the Glassdoor community that are showing potential to grow into larger trends.

Ageism on both ends of the spectrum 

As more and more younger employees join the workforce, generational conflicts may rise in 2025, with age-based stereotypes affecting all ages—such as younger women being underestimated, while older employees face doubts about health and productivity. However, this can also lead the way to cross-generational collaboration, as we’ve seen with viral trends like “letting Gen Z write the marketing script” bring Zoomers and Boomers together.

Workplace loneliness: Together but separate

Workers are experiencing feelings of loneliness and isolation across the board, whether they are working remotely or from an office. As companies shift towards maximizing productivity, it might result in fewer opportunities for employees to find moments of connection with their colleagues.

Attendance tracking in the workplace 

While hybrid and remote work are now common, there have been notable return to office (RTO) mandates in 2024 that were issued by companies such as Amazon, Dell, and Starbucks. As the RTO challenge continues, we may see companies increasingly implement RTO employee-monitoring initiatives like badge swiping and computer monitoring. However, Glassdoor’s poll suggests that 73% of workers don’t find RTO monitoring necessary or helpful. 

Methodology

Trend 1: Employees’ pent-up resentment will boil over

The results in the first chart of this section are based on a poll of 3,390 professionals conducted on the Glassdoor community platform from October 15 to October 18, 2024. The question was “Given the state of the market, do you feel stuck in your current role” with possible responses: “Yes”, “No”, “Unsure”. The sample was not reweighted and may not be nationally representative. Industry and demographic information are self-identified by users.

The quits rate data in the second chart comes from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics based on data from the September 2024 release.

The data in the third chart comes from ratings (on a 1–5 star scale) of career opportunities ratings from employee reviews of their employers on Glassdoor. For this analysis, we only include ratings from U.S. full-time or part-time workers who were current employees at the time the review was submitted. Industries are based on Glassdoor-defined industries. Data covers January 1, 2022 through November 4, 2024.

Trend 2: Falling down the career ladder will stunt pay and career growth for workers

The data in the chart is based on an analysis of job changes based on Glassdoor pay data. For salary reports for users that were current employees at the time the report was submitted, we define a job change by linking the subsequent salary report the user submitted as a current employee where the employer differs from their original salary report. Pay data is self-reported so it may be unrepresentative or undersample from users that do not return to provide subsequent salaries. Additionally, this only examines people who have found a new job and so does not include people who left a job and have not been able to find a new one, potentially underestimating pay declines.

We filter to job changes where both the original and subsequent salary are from U.S. full-time or part-time employees. We also filter out outliers where salaries are reported below minimum wage or above $1,000,000/year as well extremely high raises above 900%.

Original salary reports are from June 1, 2008 to October 30, 2024 but the data is grouped by the year of the subsequent salary report. The industry is the Glassdoor-defined industry of the original salary report (e.g., “information technology” means the user was originally employed in that sector and their subsequent salary report is for a job that may or may not be in “information technology”).

Manager jobs are identified based on the job title provided by the user. If the job title includes phrases like “manager” or “management”, it is identified as a manager job, excluding some cases like “community manager” and “case manager” that are not likely to be people manager jobs. Additionally, we also include some titles for frontline managers (e.g., “supervisor”, “team lead”, “shift lead”) and executives and C-suite members (e.g., “vice president”, “director”, “chief financial officer”).

Trend 3: Gen Z will make up 1 in 10 managers in 2025

The data in the first and second charts in this section is based on an analysis of Current Population Survey data accessed via IPUMS CPS, University of Minnesota, www.ipums.org. This data was updated through the September 2024 CPS microdata release. Generations are delineated using the Pew Research Center definitions (Gen Z: born 1997-2012, Millennials: 1981-1996, Gen X: 1965-1980, Baby Boomers: 1946-1964, Silent Generation: 1928-1945). Managers are defined using the Census 2018 occupational codes, including “0010-0440: Management Occupations” and other occupations that are “first-line supervisors”.

The second chart is a cohort analysis of the same dataset where age is calculated based on the difference between the respondent’s birth year and the survey year with data averaged across the whole year through September 2024.

The third chart is based on Glassdoor reviews from U.S. full-time/part-time current or former employees that mention “leadership” or “management” topics identified using Glassdoor’s Review Intelligence™ product. Reviews used for this analysis were submitted from January 1, 2019 to October 31, 2024, grouped by the year that the review was submitted. From these reviews, we parsed individual words used in the pros and cons sections of these reviews, removing stopwords and stemming words (stemming is a technique to group similar terms e.g., “boundary” and “boundaries” would both stem to “boundari”). We also manually group similar stems e.g. “empathetic” stems to “empathet” and “empathize” stems to “empathi” and we group “empathi” and “empathet” together.

Trend 4: Side hustle culture fuels new paths to career growth

The data in the first chart is based on a poll conducted by Harris Poll for Glassdoor from February 22, 2024 to February 26, 2024 with 1,108 respondents to this question, weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population. The question was “Do you have a side hustle to supplement your income?” and the possible responses were “Yes”, “No, but I did previously”, and “No, I never have”.

The data in the second chart is from the Business Formation Statistics dataset from the U.S. Census Bureau, updated through the September 2024 release. We report business applications, which are based on applications to the IRS for an Employer Identification Number (EIN), averaged across the year to a monthly rate.

The data in the third chart is the prime-age labor force participation rate from the Current Population Survey accessed from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics up to date through the September 2024 release. The prime-age labor force participation rate is defined as the share of the age 25–54 population that is employed or actively looking for work. The prime-age subset is often used to remove workers at ages where it is common to be in school or near/at retirement, where changing demographic and educational attainment trends can skew the results.

Trend 5: Employers are investing in holistic wellbeing

The data in the first chart is based on a poll conducted by Harris Poll for Glassdoor from February 22, 2024 to February 26, 2024 with 1,108 respondents to this question, weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population. The question was “It's more difficult for me to prioritize my mental health at work now compared to 5 years ago.” and the possible responses were “Strongly Agree”, “Somewhat Agree”, “Somewhat Disagree”, “Strongly Disagree” and “Not Applicable”. We report the share that responded “Strongly Agree” or “Somewhat Agree”.

The data in the second chart is based on employee reviews of their benefits on Glassdoor, filtered to U.S. full-time employees, including current and former employees, grouped by the year the user held the job. This analysis is based on reviews submitted from January 1, 2019 through October 9, 2024. This data may not be representative as it may oversample industries and occupations that offer more benefits.