It’s an understatement to say that work has changed a lot in the past few years. It’s been a roller coaster since 2020 when many of us had a dramatic shift to remote work, followed by two years and counting of return-to-office debates and clashes between leaders and employees. Then there was 2021 and 2022’s Great Resignation and quiet quitting, then 2023’s high-profile layoffs all on the backdrop of historic strikes and labor organizing and the rise in AI in workplaces. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
So what does 2024 hold for companies, leaders, and employees? We’ve been asking this question for the past few months and gathered expert insights and combed through our coverage to bring you the trends and predictions for what the next year holds.
The labor market and economy
The labor market ended 2023 on a quiet note. The most recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover report suggested the number of open jobs, and the number of people quitting their jobs, fell slightly in November. The final jobs report of 2023 revealed that employers added 216,000 jobs (which was more than expected) and unemployment held firm at 3.7% in December.
The labor market is pretty solid at the moment. But when we asked our LinkedIn followers about how optimistic they are about the labor market, 47% said they are less optimistic about the job market now than they were a year ago.
The unemployment rate, in particular, is pretty low and has remained so throughout Biden’s term. But many of the commenters said the job market was either strong or in trouble while citing their political beliefs or personal experiences.
Workplace changes: DEI
One likely unfortunate trend for 2024 will be a decrease in investment in DEI programs. After the large investments in 2020, companies already started to quietly scale back in 2022 and 2023—eliminating or not filling vacant Diversity roles or ending programs. Part of this is the persistent and misguided belief that DEI programs are extraneous to the bottom line and part comes from pressure from local governments following the repeal of Affirmative Action last year.
There are a few things that smart companies that see the value in DEI can do: skill-based hiring is one. Also maintaining remote work policies and obviously not cutting back or eliminating diversity programs—which are not only good retention tools but are good recruiting tools.
Workplace changes: Benefits
In the world of benefits, here are some things that benefits expert Angela Surra said we’ll see this year:
More people are working part-time, and offering benefits to these employees is crucial for companies for both recruitment and retention. Surra points out that industries like hospitality retail heavily rely on part-time workers and can see big results by lowering the eligibility threshold to allow more employees to qualify for benefits. While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) set the minimum number of weekly hours at 30 to receive full-time status, employers can lower that threshold as they see fit. She offers a few other healthcare solutions in her article which we’ll link including Health Savings Accounts and others.
Another benefits trend that we will hopefully see more of in 2024 is expanding eligibility for benefits to start on the date of hire. We covered late last year the trend of starting benefits like paid parental leave from the date of hire rather than a year-plus in, which had been the standard for decades.
Hiring trends
Some good news is that the majority of U.S. organizations will be hiring in 2024. Staffing firm LaSalle Network estimates that three-quarters of companies plan to hire in 2024.
There are three major hiring trends for the next year: The first is an increase in hiring contractors, consultants, freelancers, and gig workers. Dan Ives, senior equity research analyst at Wedbush, told Fast Company’s Jessica Bursztynsky that we will experience a “golden age for the gig economy in 2024.” That’s because gig work is up not just among uber drivers and task rabbits but also in white collar industries like IT, healthcare, and legal services.
The second trend is that we expect that AI will play an increasingly important role in the hiring process of positions like these.
In the year ahead, more applicants will use tools like ChatGPT to write their résumés and cover letters. And more hiring managers will use AI tools to recruit applicants, assess applications, and flag potential hires.
Stephanie Vozza also writes that she expects hiring managers to focus more on skills, rather than educational pedigree, in the year ahead. This trend has been building momentum for years now, but due to a tightening labor market, and new tools that lets managers make predictions about the success of employees based on their skills, Vozza believes we’ll see an increased emphasis on skills in the hiring process.
The shift to skills-based hiring is a trend that’s on both the hiring manager end and the candidate end. So rather than filtering for degrees, or even related roles or company names, both hiring managers and job seekers are changing the way they view credentialing.
This is good for companies as it opens up the candidate pool, which becomes much bigger. And it’s great for job seekers who can craft their résumés, cover letters, and profiles to highlight transferable skills from across seemingly unrelated roles and skills learned outside of traditional degrees—they can make it past filters that previously blocked them out.
Trends for job seekers and current employees
If you will be looking for a job in 2024, there continues to be a lot about the job-hunting process that’s changing. In 2023, AI was the biggest business story and as it impacts work itself, it also impacts job hunting.
Last fall on The New Way We Work, Aneesh Raman, a VP at LinkedIn, explained how AI is impacting job postings on the platform. He said that the demand for AI engineers on LinkedIn has grown by over 100% in just the past three months. But, he notes that while that’s a huge increase and that AI roles are growing quickly, these kinds of AI-centric jobs still account for less than 1% of all jobs on LinkedIn.
But beyond AI-centric roles, we’ll continue to see an increase in the addition of AI skills in job postings and within existing roles. Aneesh said that Linkedin is seeing a 75% increase each month in 2023 in members, adding terms like AI, ChatGPT, and prompt engineering to their profiles.
Fast Company contributor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic pointed out that the soft skills that can’t be replaced by AI will continue to be an important differentiator for job seekers, too. In fact, 70% of executives surveyed by LinkedIn agree that soft skills are more important than AI skills right now.
And speaking of skills, upskilling is another trend that will continue and grow in 2024. Career expert Amanda Augustine wrote a Fast Company article about trends for job seekers and she pointed out that the average half-life of skills—the halfway point for a skill set to no longer be effective—is now less than five years, and in some tech fields, it’s as short as two-and-a-half years.
So even if you aren’t planning to look for a job this year, improving your skill set or learning new in demand skills will be key to staying relevant. She suggests lots of ways to upskill: formal education programs, online courses, workshops, trade publications, networking groups, and conferences.
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