2024 Predictions. How did I do?
I love looking back at predictions to see what hit and what missed.
Let’s check out my 2024 hiring predictions and see if I’m psychic or not. (Join here to be the first to hear my 2025 trends!)
Technology
B: Robot reviewed resumes move from myth to reality
We’ve been hearing for years about the ATS screening out resumes. At the same time, recruiters spending hours reviewing those resumes were rolling their eyes.
Enter: AI.
The situation today:
Most resumes are still reviewed by a recruiter.
AI can and does do more screening. See: Paradox.AI which can conduct a whole text based interview and do early requirements screening.
Using AI to hire is evolving from a regulatory and compliance standpoint.
A: ChatGPT playing around to work product
One study in September 2024 by AWS estimated that 57% of the content on the internet is AI generated or AI translated.
A friend just told me she used Gemini to write a letter to the sellers of a house she wanted. I use Paradox and/or Gemini and/or ChatGPT daily. And am now on Lindy.AI for custom builds.
So, maybe I should have included more options beyond “ChatGPT” but think this one is only getting started.
D: Annual & Seasonal Shifts ---> Monthly & Weekly
I stand by the idea that sentiment shifts more readily but this year was consistent with leverage sitting squarely with employers. So, this was a dud in real shifts. It was true in emotional noise and clickbait.
B: AI enabled jobs vs. AI replaced. Jobs stable-ish. Wages flat to down-ish.
Some jobs were AI replaced but overall more markets saw flattening or sluggish markets.
Technically wages overall did outpace inflation this year on the whole.
Specific to those industries most impacted by AI though:
Software engineer salaries averaged $111,193, reflecting a slight decrease from the previous year's average of $111,348 (DICE jobs report)
Customer Service wages rose only .1% (BLS)
Overall, we added an average of 200k jobs/month in 2024. Compare that to 2021 in which the average was 550k/month. The jobs we added were heavily weighted in government and healthcare jobs.
Work Culture
A: Companies keep “right sizing” even if they’re financially stable.
While layoffs slowed down, plenty of companies continued cutting into 2024 including but not limited to Meta. The name of the game continues to be efficiency and output.
D: New hires leaving despite short tenures
Departures overall slowed but I don’t read that as a signal of loyalty so much as a tough market. I stand by this one especially in a future strong job market. We certainly saw more trends like #QuitTok than #GirlBoss hustle content.
B: Pay Per Use ↑
Pay per use continued surging across SaaS this year from Salesforce to early stage startups. Gig and fractional work continued to grow from firms reticent to spend on full time salaries. I still anticipate the idea of “pay for performance” or “pay by the project” growing but it will up against collective action and evolving legislation around gig work.
A: Gen Z outnumber Boomers for the first time
Current US workforce:
Millennials - 36%
Gen X - 31%
Gen Z - 18%
Baby Boomers - 15%
A: More Transparency as the Norm
5 more states passed legislation for pay transparency in 2024: Minnesota, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Vermont. That means over 30% of US workers live somewhere that requires companies to disclose salaries. That inevitably leads to the expectation even for workers who live elsewhere.
At the employee level, employees continued to video their layoffs and share their demands publicly formally through unions and informally through petitions.
A: Collective Action ↑
Huge strikes hit this year including Boeing, SAG-AFTRA, Port Workers and more.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported a significant surge in union election petitions, with over 2,600 filed during the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024—a 32% increase from the previous year.
Full numbers on any membership changes will be released Jan 2025.
A: Attention Spans ↓
Well, if you made it this far in reading this - you’re the exception - congratulations!
A goldfish now has a longer attention span than a human according to this stat that I can’t verify elsewhere but is fun to include here. Not sure that it’s literally so much as figuratively true.
Either way, election stress + TikTok brain + economic pressure = a lot of distractions.
The good news is that the solutions don’t need to be new! See: meditation which has been around for thousands of years. We can choose another path.
2025: What’s coming?
Will be sharing my 2025 predictions (virtually) on January 14th! Join us here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2025-hiring-trends-tickets-1077472422019
