New Pathways has been a framework for us to unpack different school and community levers that can better set young people up for success in what’s next. It’s an urgent mission, made more difficult because the world doesn’t stay still for long. Up to this point, our “why now” arguments have been focused on the following:
- Most teens leave high school unprepared for what’s next.
- Many students are not engaged in school.
- Most teens feel unprepared for postsecondary decisions.
- As Tom Vander Ark has shared previously, “There is evidence that upward economic mobility has declined and income inequality has risen in the United States in recent decades. Sluggish wage growth over the last 50 years damped the American Dream with fewer people from lower and middle families climbing the economic ladder.”
While these are important drivers for school redesign and career-connected learning, the world continues to evolve, creating and encountering new urgencies and new realities. One of these new realities is that current graduates may be entering a new labor market, one where the pathways that existed a few years prior no longer hold the same promise or, perhaps, have eroded completely.
What’s up with the current workforce (early 2025)?
Previous pathways of promise are doing mass layoffs.
Recent reporting from Belle Lin at the Wall Street Journal says that the unemployment rate in the information technology sector rose between December and January – from 3.9% to 5.7% percent. These numbers seem small, but it brought the unemployment rate in this sector above the average unemployment rate which is 4%. Some economists suggest that this is the first sign of AI agents being adopted and implemented. This is supported by the fact that we are at a five-year-low in software engineer job listings. It is now a buyer’s market in industries that have created slam-dunk careers for decades. In 2024 alone, there were more than 150,000 job cuts at leading technology companies and, while the rate has slowed, companies like Google, Starbucks and more continue to do layoffs. At the same time, the new administration is taking a blunt blade to the federal labor force, hacking and slashing their way through departments and initiatives resulting in many seeking work.
People aren’t retiring and making space for new hires.
A recent Pew Research Center analysis finds that 1 in 5 people over 65 choose to continue working. Supporting this data, the National Bureau of Labor Statistics shares that “Although still low relative to the prime-working-age group (ages 25 to 54), the 65-and-older participation rate has been increasing and is projected to increase further from 18.9 percent in 2021 to 21.5 percent in 2031. Similarly, the participation rate for the 55-to-64 age group is projected to increase from 64.6 to 68.2 percent in 2031. The result of these trends is over half of the labor force growth from 2021 to 2031 is projected to come from the 65-and-older age group.”
AI is beginning to replace tasks and AI agents are right around the corner.
The World Economic Forum notes that the pace of automation and the introduction of AI are shifting job requirements, making entry-level positions more demanding. For instance, cybersecurity roles that once required minimal experience now demand advanced certifications and several years of hands-on experience.
Apprenticeships and work-integrated learning programs are critical for bridging the gap between expressed aptitudes and possible careers. As apprenticeships expert Ryan Craig points out, “Apprenticeships provide a practical, hands-on approach to learning, offering paid, on-the-job training that prepares individuals for the demands of the modern workforce. This model is particularly effective in the tech sector, where practical experience with digital tools and platforms is crucial. […]I think it’s important now more than ever because the skills that employers are finding hard to find—those digital skills, those platform skills—are actually harder to learn in a classroom than they are by doing. “
Platforms appear fallible.
Meanwhile, the loss of traditional jobs during the pandemic and the rise of the platform economy boosted business starts to more than 5 million in 2021 and 2022 (double the rate of 10 years ago). An Adobe survey found that about 45% of Gen Z creators surveyed said they aspire to own a business and make money from content shared online. And, while millennials are experimenting with having a side hustle alongside a day job, “Gen Z is focused more on making a project into a career,” said Maria Yap, Vice President at Adobe. “They’re thinking, no — my regular job could be the thing that I’m passionate about.’”
These are positive trends but platforms are not known to be kind to their creators, creating a slippery foundation for young entrepreneurs. In two recent examples, Spotify has gotten heat for creating “ghost music” that collects royalties for the company itself by taking advantage of algorithms. In addition, TikTok and other platforms have recently been under fire for potential privacy and monopoly risks, giving content creators a scare of unstable ground.
It’s a lot to take in and a heck of a lot to ask for a young person to be cognisant of and responsive to. The best way to ensure that they succeed in this economy of uncertainty is to support them in being informed, agentic and empowered.
Why Being Informed Matters Now More Than Ever
Without robust pathways infrastructure and community partnerships, it’s unlikely that education systems will be able to adapt quickly to workforce and world needs. There are numerous tech tools that seek to bridge this awareness gap:
- EvolveMe and FutureScape from American Student Assistance (ASA) let students explore careers through interests and reward-based experiences.
- Pathful (formerly Nepris) offers an excellent platform for connecting young people with industry professionals, facilitating valuable career exploration opportunities.
- Roadtrip Nation Interviews provides direct access to insights from professionals. Simply search by field or job title to explore real-world career stories.
- Career Village and AI Career Coach allow users to explore a wide range of pathways by providing tailored content and guidance across multiple industries.
- SchoolJoy enables interactive conversations with AI-generated professionals, offering a dynamic and engaging way to explore various career paths.
- Gladeo curates local career guides that align with in-demand industries, helping users jump-start their career exploration in targeted fields.
- CareerViewXR is an immersive career exploration platform that brings the job site to you.
Adding some of these tools is only the beginning. In addition, schools and districts need to check their career listings annually for relevancy and try thinking multiple years down the line. Consider using tools like futures thinking and the new Career Clusters Framework from Advance CTE to imagine different intersections of industries and skills and predict opportunities
Why Entrepreneurship & Agency Matters Now More Than Ever
The new updates to the Career Clusters Framework from Advance CTE name Entrepreneurship as a Cross Cutting Cluster, meaning they are critical skills to embed in every sector. In our recent Career Clusters Appendix, we highlighted some of the programs and examples that we think are leading the way in teaching young people problem-finding and problem-framing skills. In addition, we’ve written at length about the need for an entrepreneurial mindset and agency (see here and here and here for starters), however, an additional key to this equation is an ability to apply these skills in collective and collaborative contexts. The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) is a framework of skills and qualities that individuals and organizations need to develop in order to successfully work with complex societal issues, in particular, those identified in UN Agenda 2030 and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and to develop crucial personal and interpersonal skills. These skills range from cognitive abilities to emotional and social competencies.
- Self-Development: IDGs focus on internal growth, helping young individuals understand and manage their thoughts, emotions, and actions better.
- Societal Contribution: By cultivating these skills, young people can better navigate and contribute to solving global challenges like climate change, inequality, and sustainability.
- Empowerment and Agency: IDGs equip young individuals with the ability to make informed decisions and take actions that align with global needs and their personal values.
Why Empowering Youth Autonomy Matters Now More Than Ever
A challenge with pathways is that many young people have been drinking from the white-collar fire hose. 25 years of empowered tech workers have changed the story of labor into snacks in the office, unlimited PTO, working from home, and competitively applying to new companies every two years to drive more stock and a higher salary. These days are likely behind us given the aforementioned numbers and the near-constant announcements of Return to Office (RTO) mandates from some of these very same companies. In a market where the choices seem few and far between, how can we still encourage autonomy and agency in our young people?
In a recent conversation with Michael Horn we discussed the power in “Hiring your next job”, an idea that seems farfetched to the many job seekers out there who are currently struggling to get an interview, in spite of experience:
“I think the major argument in the book is this is actually true from day one when you take that first job. And a lot of people sit there, crossing their fingers. When you ask them how you got your last job, they’ll be like, “Oh, I played the numbers game. It was bound to work out eventually,” or “I was in the right place at the right time.” What we’ve seen from the research of over a thousand individuals switching jobs is that there’s a causal process in place that plays itself over and over again. Ultimately, individuals have far more choice than they think they do in the matter, even when that doesn’t feel like it.
[… Y]ou have to understand what progress looks like for you, what your priorities are. That’s the big mindset shift: how do you uncover that and start to be able to tell people what it is you really want to do, not what you want to be. Because that’s the other mistake people often make. They’re like, they want the fancy title or, you know, the great-sounding thing. That’s a short-term return on ego. It’s a long-term failure as a plan. You want to focus on what you’re going to be doing on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis.”
I was recently struck by the Beloved Community’s Employee Experience Continua, a robust model for evaluating and enhancing employee experiences across various industries. By tailoring this model to better support work-based learning for students, we can unlock even greater potential for students transitioning into the workforce, ensuring cultures and experiences of abundance.
The Employee Experience Continua provides an effective framework that helps organizations analyze their strengths and weaknesses in various domains like job security, performance review, training, and professional development. The spectrum of scarcity to abundance provides useful language for helping students plot themselves on a growth journey.
Conclusion
Graduates who aren’t leaving informed, agentic and empowered will struggle in a rapidly evolving labor market. It’s important that in spite of these shifting trends, we lean into agency and entrepreneurship as tools of abundance rather than scarcity and empower young people to seek out quality jobs rather than just the next available thing.
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What does it take to make pathways resilient in a changing labor market? Focusing on agency, entrepreneurship and empowerment.
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