2026 Workforce Signals to Keep an Eye On

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Daniel Zhao: We're talking about an environment of extremely high economic uncertainty. Changes are coming one after the other in today's business environment. And so it's all the more important for leaders and employees to be aligned so that when you have to adjust on the fly, workers understand why, and they're also engaged and ready to make that pivot as well. 

Jill Finlayson: Welcome to the Future of Work podcast with Berkeley Extension and EDGE in Tech at the University of California, focused on expanding diversity and gender equity in tech. EDGE in Tech is part of the Innovation Hub at CITRIS, the Center for IT Research in the Interest of Society, and the Banatao Institute. UC Berkeley Extension is the continuing education arm of the University of California at Berkeley.

It's a new year, and if you're like us, you're probably wondering what 2026 has in store for workers, job seekers, and leaders.

Glassdoor's latest trends show some big signals to watch-- a growing disconnect between employees and leadership, many layoffs creating near-constant anxiety, and job searches stretching longer than ever. Burnout is high, trust is low, and a lot of people are job-hugging or staying put because the market feels so uncertain. But there are also some clues about where opportunity might pop up this year-- from shifting expectations around AI skills to what's really happening with remote work and promotions. 

To guide this conversation, we're looking at real-world data from Glassdoor. In case you're not familiar with it, Glassdoor is a website where current and former employees anonymously review companies they have worked for. These anonymous and candid insights into company culture, salary, and leadership, from real employee experiences, help job seekers make informed career decisions and helps companies showcase their culture. 

To talk about this, we're delighted to welcome back Daniel Zhao, Chief Economist at Glassdoor, who has been doing research on trends in the job market and workplace. During the past seven years, as part of a team, Daniel has explored topics such as employee satisfaction, salary transparency, and pay equity, leveraging data from reviews, salaries, and posts reported by employees on Glassdoor. Prior to joining the Economic Research team, Daniel has worked as a Data Scientist at Glassdoor and Wayfair and earned his degree in Applied Math from Harvard. Welcome back, Daniel. 

Daniel Zhao: Hi, Jill. Thanks for having me. 

Jill Finlayson: Well, it's great to catch up with you on these latest trends that we're seeing on Glassdoor. So can you tell us a little bit about Glassdoor and how you got into this job, and how they became a leader in economic thinking? 

Daniel Zhao: Well, Glassdoor really started around the 2008 recession. And it was really built on the idea that transparency and shedding a light on what is going on in the workplace can help people form better workplace culture, find workplaces that are a better match and better fit for them. And that means being able to read reviews about companies and their culture, sharing salary information and benefit information, and just really getting the lowdown in a more crowdsourced way, rather than having to rely on these informal networks or secret back channels that people have. By putting it all out there, not only do we increase access to that information, but we also make it available to everybody. 

Jill Finlayson: And what do you think people value most? What's the information that they find most valuable in Glassdoor? 

Daniel Zhao: Well, salaries are definitely very impactful. They're a hard number that people really focus on. But we actually do see that people want all kinds of information as they're going through their job-search process. So interview reviews, for example, are very common-- people want to get a sense of what kind of questions might come up or what to expect when they're going into an interview-- and then company reviews as well because that is something that's not as transparent. Nowadays, many states have these pay transparency laws-- you can see what companies are supposed to offer for a particular job. But in terms of what it's actually like to work at a company, that's still very opaque, and that's something that Glassdoor can help provide information on. 

Jill Finlayson: I think that's super helpful to get real-world insights, because until you start the job, you really don't know what you're getting yourself into. 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of uncertainty whenever you're starting a new job. And so anything you can do to give yourself a little bit more clarity when you're considering an offer or considering applying to your company, that kind of clarity is really helpful. 

Jill Finlayson: And on the company side, they're getting to see a lot of information about their own culture. How have you seen them use the information from Glassdoor? 

Daniel Zhao: Companies absolutely pay attention to their Glassdoor ratings and reviews, and that is a way to take feedback and to see how to improve their culture or their practices moving forward. So obviously, you can get that information from internal surveys, from asking people. But there is something to be said about having a third-party anonymous platform collect that information and share it because that's something that's truly outside of the control of the company, and there isn't the same pressure that you might get if you're filling out a survey internally. 

Jill Finlayson: So it gives them a little bit of candid sentiment analysis that they may not be able to get internally. 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, exactly. Having candid, honest, and authentic feedback is a really important value-add for businesses that Glassdoor can provide. 

Jill Finlayson: So before we jump into the report, because I know you've been doing a lot of work summarizing some of the trends, do you have one word that would summarize the state of the job market right now? 

Daniel Zhao: I would say disconnect or disconnected. We're really seeing that there are a lot of gaps in the labor market right now. So there are some obvious ones where workers don't necessarily feel like this job market is working for them. They don't feel like those opportunities are available. They don't feel like the employers that they want to get a job from have those opportunities. But we also see that show up in other ways that are maybe more about the workplace and how people interact with each other. 

So, for example, we see a disconnect between employees and leaders. We also see disconnects in terms of what employees want from their jobs. So for example, return to office-- people want to be able to work remotely or flexibly, and that isn't something that a lot of employers are still providing nowadays. So I would say disconnect is really something that has captured what has been going on in 2025 and even 2024, and something that we think is going to be a powerful theme for 2026 as well. 

Jill Finlayson: So this great employer-leader-employee disconnect, how did you detect that? What sort of signals did you see? 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, so the first trend that we really dug into in our Worklife Trends report is this disconnect between employees and leaders. And so this is something we've been hearing anecdotally, of course, where employees say that they don't feel like they're getting the same level of communication from their leaders. They don't feel like they can trust what their leaders are saying. And when we actually look at Glassdoor reviews, this is borne out quantitatively as well. So you see these terms like disconnect, misalignment, distrust, have all spiked in the last year compared to the year prior in Glassdoor reviews. 

And that's really a sign that employees, when they're talking about leadership, when they're talking about management, they're using all of these terms, they're using all of these ideas that emphasize how this disconnect has happened. And I think it's actually a very interesting-- to put this in a little bit of historical context as well. Because when we look back over the last five to six years, since really the beginning of COVID, we actually saw there was an increase in employee satisfaction with how their senior leaders were being transparent during the pandemic. 

And if you think back to that moment, there were many leaders who were willing to be transparent and willing to be a little bit vulnerable, even, to say, hey, there's a global pandemic starting right now, we don't exactly what's going to happen, we don't exactly how we're going to get through it, but ultimately, we're going to try to be transparent about it, keep everybody updated, and try to get through this together. And we actually saw that employee satisfaction with transparency rose during that moment. And then since then, it's come back down, as a lot of senior leaders have reverted back to those pre-COVID playbooks where it's all about trying to keep your cards close to the chest, not reveal too much to employees. 

Maybe, especially with some of these moves, like layoffs and return-to-office policies right now, leaders have been a little bit cagey about what their motives have been. And so some of the reason that this disconnect is particularly salient right now is because employees have seen recently better examples of communication from their leaders that are now maybe feeling like they've actually gone back to a worse situation compared to what they've seen recently. 

Jill Finlayson: That's interesting that people are noticing a delta-- a change-- that they don't appreciate. So what could leaders take away from this lack of alignment and increase in distrust? 

Daniel Zhao: Well, the first thing I would say is that it is extremely important. Like, it sounds like a buzzword to say that misalignment or disconnection are important, but I would say it's actually even more important right now because we're talking about an environment of extremely high economic uncertainty. Whether you're talking about policy or you're talking about AI transformation, changes are coming one after the other in today's business environment. And so it's all the more important for leaders and employees to be aligned so that when you have to adjust on the fly, workers understand what the strategy changes are, why they're happening, and they're also engaged and ready to make that pivot as well. So I think that's why it's important for leaders. 

And then, in terms of how leaders can actually, maybe start to build some of this trust back up, the first point I would make here is that trust is something that really requires a lot of effort over time. Trust is something that takes years to build, but can also be destroyed in a second-- in a moment. So this is something that requires ongoing investment. It's not something that you can say, well, the job market is a little bit weaker right now, so we can push harder on workers and not have to worry about the long-term consequences. That's something that workers will remember down the road. 

So it means for leaders having strong values that you're going to fall back on and that you can really build your culture around. It means commitment to those values, not flip-flopping willy-nilly based on whatever the latest fad is or the latest trend. And then also making sure that you're communicating transparently. Transparency has been something that has come up a lot in Glassdoor reviews in terms of what workers want from their leaders. 

Jill Finlayson: So on the plus side, would you say that their employees are seeking and getting more of this emotional intelligence in leaders? 

Daniel Zhao: It's a really interesting question because one thing we do see in Glassdoor data is that Glassdoor reviews about leaders really are emphasizing these ideas around emotional intelligence even more, so you see a lot of phrases and terms like promoting worker well-being, respecting boundaries, addressing burnout, all of these ideas that are related to emotional intelligence. And that's something that's increased dramatically since 2019, before the pandemic. 

And so what I think is going on here is that the expectations that workers have for their managers are much higher than they were five, six years ago, before the pandemic. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're getting that quite yet, but it's another reminder to leaders and managers that the bar on what constitutes good management and good leadership has been raised. 

Jill Finlayson: One of the articles I read recently talked about layoffs, and specifically, layoffs in regard to AI. And the research went on to suggest that these companies were not actually making an investment in AI-- they were just reducing their workforce. So to me, that's a lack of authenticity because it just sounds better to the market to say we're reducing jobs so that we can invest in AI. But that isn't actually, oftentimes, what is happening. What are you seeing in terms of layoffs? 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, so I will say that every layoff is different, and every company is different. So you definitely need to take explanations that you hear about layoffs with a grain of salt because companies are trying to present themselves in the best way to investors, what they say is a reason for layoffs might not always match up truly with what the reason is. And so just as a job seeker or as a savvy media consumer, it just helps to be a little bit skeptical about what the actual reason is. 

That being said, when we actually look at the data around layoffs, I would say there are maybe two things to focus on here. Quickly, on AI, we actually don't really see strong evidence that AI is leading to widespread layoffs. AI is still a pretty new technology. If we think about large language models, LLMs in particular, those have really only been publicly available for maybe three years. And so businesses have not really figured out how to fully integrate them into their processes in such a way that they can actually lay off workers or remove them from those processes. So the evidence at the aggregate economic level is still pretty thin that AI is actually causing layoffs. 

And what we do expect moving into 2026 is what we're calling the forever layoffs. So this idea that companies, instead of doing a big round of layoffs that is going to create a bunch of headlines, a bunch of negative press, instead, they're focusing on these smaller layoffs that might be small enough not to get attention, but doing two years, they're doing a small layoff every two months or something like that. 

And so we are seeing that when we look at data from the WARN Act-- so this is an act that requires employers who are doing layoffs of a certain size to actually file those publicly-- we see that those reported layoffs are actually getting smaller. But we also know that layoffs in general are increasing in their total amount. So I think what's going on here is that there are more layoffs, but each individual one is smaller. 

Jill Finlayson: I hadn't thought about the fact that a big layoff would get media coverage, so smaller ones might go under the radar. And yet, does that create more stress than one big layoff? 

Daniel Zhao: In some ways, it can, because employees are not getting this information solely from the news. They can know what's going on inside the company whether it's announced or not. If you have a friend of a friend who's been laid off in your company, then you are going to about that, regardless of whether there's an article that's been written about it or not. And so what we actually have found in our research in the past is that repeat layoffs can actually be worse for culture and worse for the employees who do survive those layoffs because it increases that uncertainty. It increases that anxiety because workers are just worried that another shoe is going to drop in a few months, and they can't focus on their work. 

Jill Finlayson: I can see that affecting morale. I can see that affecting productivity. How are these people doing compared to their colleagues who have been laid off? 

Daniel Zhao: When people are talking about layoffs, they are mostly thinking about the people who have been laid off. And of course, there is a huge negative impact on people who have been laid off. It's extremely disruptive to their careers, not to mention worries that folks might have about financial security. But we have also looked at the folks who survive a round of layoffs and what the impact for them might be. And what we see is that culture and employee satisfaction do take a dip immediately after a layoff, even for those workers who are still around. And that impact persists, even up to two years after the layoff. 

And again, this goes back to what we were saying, where in a turbulent time and an uncertain time where businesses need to be nimble, they need their workforces to be engaged so that they can pivot if they need to to whatever AI strategy is important, then having a disengaged workforce, having a workforce that doesn't have high morale, that's constantly anxious and worried, that's not going to help you run your business effectively and efficiently. So there is a little bit of irony that businesses are pushing so hard on efficiency and productivity right now. And some of these layoffs or these layoff strategies are a little bit shortsighted, in my opinion. 

Jill Finlayson: So let's talk about the folks who have been laid off. It seems like there aren't many jobs out there. It seems like it's really hard to get rehired. What are you seeing? 

Daniel Zhao: That absolutely is the case. And so when we think about people who have been laid off-- and to step back for a second, I think there has been a lot of concern or a lot of questions that I've gotten where people will say, oh, I see all of these headlines about how the economy has added this many jobs in this month, or the unemployment rate is XYZ, and they wonder why that doesn't match up with their experience where they've been laid off and they've been unemployed for however many weeks-- and so there is this disconnect where people don't feel like the job market is working for them, but at the same time, they hear these headlines about economic data actually looking pretty OK. 

There are two things I would say about that. One is that a significant driver of that disconnect is the hiring rate. So this is the gross hiring rate, not met. But just in terms of how many people get a job each month, that number has come down very significantly over the last few years. And that is actually comparable to maybe 2013, 2014 levels. So what we're seeing is a low-hiring job market, which, of course, means that people who have been laid off or people who are just graduating from school, for example, are finding it very difficult to get into a job right now. 

And for people who are in a job, they are finding it difficult to move up the career ladder. Because traditionally, the way you do that is you go to a new company where you can get a promotion, or you get a raise, or you use that external offer as leverage to get that promotion or raise internally instead. But because there isn't hiring on the open market, it's difficult for people who are in a job to rise, and for people who are out of a job to get into one. So that's definitely one aspect of it. 

And then even though the unemployment rate is low, the experience of being unemployed is still pretty harsh. So there are still many people who have been unemployed for over six months. We see that in the data, where, I believe, the average number of weeks that somebody has been unemployed is roughly six months right now. So clearly, this is still an issue that's affecting people who are unemployed, this difficulty in getting back into a job. 

Jill Finlayson: So for the people who are stuck in the jobs and staying in the jobs, oftentimes, they're not rehiring. So they've removed three people, and the one person who stays now is having to absorb those three people's job. What are you seeing around the changing shape of the job? 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, it's a great point. And I think that's part of the reason that you see employee satisfaction and culture decline after a layoff, even for the workers who are still employed at that company. We hear a very common refrain from workers that, hey, I survived a round of layoffs, and I'm being asked to do the job of multiple people now. And that's OK for the short term, but it's not sustainable in the long term. And ultimately, what we hear is that that's a recipe for burnout, unsurprisingly. 

And I think that the point about sustainability is really important there. Like, yes, you can as a business juice your productivity by making everybody work harder, but if it's not at a sustainable rate, then ultimately, that's going to come crashing back down to Earth at some point. And I think another aspect of this is one thing we do hear from workers is, hey, I'm willing to work harder. I'm willing to put in the extra effort and to take on more responsibility. But many workers don't feel like they are getting rewarded for that level of effort right now, in particular, because of the low-hiring environment. 

Because there aren't those opportunities outside of the company, there isn't that leverage inside the company, many workers feel like they aren't making progress in their career. And what we actually hear from workers more often is, hey, we're willing to put in the extra effort, but we just don't feel like we're being rewarded for it right now. And in that kind of context, what's the point in putting in extra effort? 

Jill Finlayson: Yeah, I've heard it referred to as ghost growth, where they're like, we're going to give you more responsibility, we're going to give you this title, but we're not going to give you a salary increase. [LAUGHS] 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, and of course, from the business perspective, if you don't have budget for promotions or that sort of thing, there are other ways that you can actually foster growth for your employees, whether that's giving people options to try different jobs at the same level, or give them opportunities to develop skills, or that sort of thing. We understand that budgets are not infinite, that you do have to make some trade-offs. But if you want people to be engaged, you want people to be committed to the company and committed to growing, then there needs to be something at the end of the tunnel to actually get people excited. 

Jill Finlayson: So what else can reduce burnout? And what are companies doing to help people's mental health? 

Daniel Zhao: We've actually seen a few different divergent trends here. The number one benefit that has become more common since the pandemic is access to remote work, which is obviously no surprise given how many people have the option to work remotely or hybrid today compared to just a few years ago. But the second benefit that has seen the largest increase is mental health care. So access to mental health care benefits is something that has dramatically increased over the last five to six years. 
And of course, there's a little bit of a question on chicken and the egg here, whether that's because people are feeling increased levels of burnout, they need more mental health support, or if it's coming more from the employer side, where they're realizing, hey, this is actually something that we can offer to be competitive in the marketplace, we can offer this new benefit to attract and retain our talent. 

On the flip side, we are seeing that burnout and anxiety are very high for workers right now. People are talking about burnout. They're talking about anxiety, uncertainty. It's become a very common refrain amongst workers. 

Jill Finlayson: So if people are not super happy with their current job, we're not seeing job hopping. We're really seeing job-hugging. What are you seeing in terms of people-- are they applying for as many jobs as they used to? Are they getting as many offers as they used to? What's the reality out there? 

Daniel Zhao: When we look at how people are behaving with their job search, we do see that workers are prioritizing job security right now. And so that shows up in how people talk about their jobs. I've seen some reviews, for example, where people say, I'm really unhappy with how my job is set up. I'm doing so much work. I feel very overworked. But I actually feel lucky because I see all of my peers in the industry have undergone layoffs or have been out of work for a long time. And so even though my job is in a pretty bad situation, I feel lucky. And so that is definitely a storyline that we hear there. 

But in terms of more closely on the job search side, one of the trends we looked at in our Trends report was to actually look at Glassdoor data around interview reviews and how people are responding to offers that they do get. And one thing that we noticed is that workers are less likely to reject a job offer now than they were last year or the year before. And what we think is going on here is that workers are settling for the first acceptable job offer that they're getting, rather than trying to hole out for something that's a little bit better. 

Because they know that in today's market, they might not get a second offer, or that second offer might not be better, or that first offer might disappear. And so as workers get more nervous about their leverage and their ability to negotiate, they're much more willing to settle nowadays. And that's something that we are actually seeing in the Glassdoor data. 

Jill Finlayson: That's interesting. Are they also settling on salary, or are they still negotiating for their salary? 

Daniel Zhao: Yes and no. So there are many people who don't negotiate on salary. And that's actually true regardless of how good the job market is doing. There are just a lot of people who don't feel comfortable negotiating for theirs. I would generally encourage folks to always try to negotiate. If the company says no, that's OK. But it's very rare that it's a bad thing to try to ask for a little bit more money, especially once you have the offer in hand. 

But in terms of how that's changing, we don't necessarily see that behavior in negotiation per se, but certainly the way that people apply to jobs might be a little bit different as a result. Maybe you're considering roles that do pay less that you wouldn't have considered earlier. So, for example, a manager who wants to be a manager but can't find that job, and so instead applies to senior individual contributor level roles instead, where they're going to have to take a pay cut there, but it's because the role is different and the responsibilities are different, rather than just the salary being different. 

Jill Finlayson: Well, some of the other things people can negotiate for might be the total package. So it could be vacation. It could be remote work. You mentioned a little bit earlier that things are shifting on the remote work side. What is happening in terms of return to the office? 

Daniel Zhao: Definitely seeing that companies have been pushing on this return-to-office idea. We were curious to look at was how are workers feeling as a result. And obviously, if you ask workers, they say we hate return to office, we want to stay remote, we like these flexible options. But more concretely, what we are seeing is how remote and hybrid workers feel about their career opportunities is declining, and so their Glassdoor ratings for career growth and career opportunities has been dropping. And that's actually been a larger drop than what we see for workers who are not remote or hybrid. 

And so what I think is going on here is that companies are making more explicit the trade-off between flexibility and remote options and career growth. And some employers are actually doing this very, very explicitly, where they say, hey, if you are remote or if you're not complying with our return to office directives, then we are not going to consider you for promotion next cycle. There are some employers who have made that policy very clear. But there are also some employers who might be implicitly making that the de facto policy by maybe not investing as much into making sure that remote workers have the same level of visibility. 

So if you have somebody who's in the office all the time and runs into one of the senior leaders in the office breakroom and is able to talk about their work and all the successes that they've had, that person is maybe going to have an easier time getting promoted next cycle because they're more visible to the senior leaders, rather than somebody who's remote and doesn't run into their senior leaders in the office breakroom or whatever. 

And the promotion process is a little bit political. And so there is opportunity for this kind of proximity bias to bleed in. And so I think ultimately, what we're seeing is that remote workers and hybrid workers feel like they're being left behind from a career perspective and are having to make this trade-off more explicitly in terms of, OK, well, do I want to keep these remote options, these flexible options, or do I really want to prioritize my career, in which case maybe I'll have to give up on those remote and flexible options. 

Jill Finlayson: That's interesting to hear that it's both explicit and implicit, this impact on their career growth, and disappointing, as far as I'm concerned, because I think that the hybrid workplace is such a better option for most people. 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, and to be clear, there are some employers out there who don't even realize that this is a problem. You might have an employer who's totally happy to have a hybrid workforce, where some people are in-person, some people are hybrid, some people are remote. But unless they are making an active effort to make sure that remote and hybrid workers are being given the same opportunities, being considered for promotion in the same way, you can naturally get a little bit of this proximity bias or these other issues that just slightly disadvantage remote and hybrid workers. So even for employers who do fully believe in the remote model or the hybrid model, this is still something that they should be focusing on. 

Jill Finlayson: So we have heard mentions of AI surge. We're hearing that a lot more. Are you actually seeing this in the job descriptions in requirements for what they're hiring for? 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, when we look at job postings, we have seen more businesses and more employers talk about AI in their job descriptions, but it is a pretty mixed bag. So some of those mentions are a little bit vague, where it's just like, we would love for our job seekers to have experience with LLMs or have experience with AI. But I think this just goes back to the idea that AI, and especially, large language models, are still pretty new. And so what exactly employers want from them, aside from just wanting more productivity and efficiency, there aren't necessarily the specifics there yet. And in fact, some of the specifics, who knows? Maybe in a year or two, will end up being out of date given how quickly AI is evolving. 

One example of this is that there was a lot of coverage about the idea that prompt engineering was going to be a job of the future, and a skill that everybody would need to have. And that hasn't really borne out in reality or in the data. So we haven't replaced a whole swath of jobs with prompt engineers. I think that when we talk about AI, there's a lot of hype out there. I think it helps to be humble on this and to recognize that these technologies are still very new, and the impacts that we are going to see from them are still very uncertain. 

Jill Finlayson: So it's there. We're seeing the words appearing. But it's not clear what the employers really mean by having some AI experience. 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, I think it's still very experimental. So I would say that every employer out there is experimenting with AI, but in terms of knowing exactly what they need, it's still pretty early stages for that. To take a different tack at it, when we actually look at how employees are responding to AI, we don't actually see employees talk about AI that much. When we actually look at the reviews and how people are talking about their workplaces and the issues that they have, AI is pretty far down their list of priorities. I think most workers are more concerned with return to office, with layoffs, with job security. 

And so if you ask people directly, do you think that AI will have an impact on your job security, or are you worried about AI specifically? Most people will say, yes. But in terms of what they would organically list as, say, their top five concerns, very few people have AI as a top priority. And this is actually something we see in the quantitative data as well. So when we look at occupations that are highly exposed to AI, and we look at the employee satisfaction for those roles, they really haven't changed that much compared to jobs that are not as exposed. There's a lot of other things that they have to worry about, and AI doesn't really make their top list of concerns. 

Jill Finlayson: Have you seen any job classes be impacted, for example, some jobs going away, or some jobs expanding?

Daniel Zhao: So we do see some jobs where there are hints of stronger impact, so for example, translators and interpreters or copywriters. In those occupations, we have seen employees express more concern with their job prospects, with their career growth. They aren't explicitly saying that it's because of AI, but those are cases where we have heard more anecdotes that AI is having an impact. And so there are these pockets of impact, but they do ultimately represent a small share of the overall workforce, of the overall economy. And so as we look into 2026, do expect that we're going to have more of these anecdotes. But it's still probably going to be too early to see the quantitative impact economy-wide that I think some people are worried about. 

Jill Finlayson: Are you hearing any information from the employee side about companies stepping up and providing upskilling or training, or growth opportunities? 

Daniel Zhao: Over the last few years, employers have invested more in reskilling and upskilling. And I think in particular with these AI initiatives that many companies are pushing, that there has been an effort to make sure that their employees are, at the very least, getting some exposure to AI so they can look for those opportunities in terms of implementing them in their everyday work. So I think that reskilling and upskilling are definitely more important. But those are also programs that sometimes do hit the chopping block when businesses need to cut funding, and they need to cut costs. 

And so this is definitely an area that you will want to keep track of as the business cycle changes. So if we do see a more prolonged slowdown, our business is going to respond by investing more in the employees that they have, or are they going to feel like they can rest on their laurels a little bit and find talent on the cheap on the open market, rather than investing in their own people? 

Jill Finlayson: Well, speaking of the open market-- obviously, Glassdoor is across the United States-- what are you seeing as cities that are bright spots, especially bright spots for new grads? 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, this is always an interesting conversation and a very live question that we get from New grads and entry-level workers. So there certainly are these cities out there that offer very high pay. And so when you think about like a New York City, or San Francisco, or San Jose, these are all cities where there are tech jobs, for example, that offer very high salaries, but they also have very high cost of living as a result, too. And then, of course, right now, with how the tech industry is doing, there are some limitations on the opportunities that are available, especially for new grads. And so there is a question about whether new grads should instead focus on some of these up-and-coming cities. 

So, for example, we've seen cities like Austin, Denver, Miami, and then even some smaller cities like Boise or Provo in Utah, so these are all cities where the pay is definitely a little bit lower, but the cost of living is also lower as well. But the nice thing is that those are all cities where we've seen much faster wage growth over the last few years. And so, where somebody chooses to look for their first job after school, there are different schools of thought. 

Like, you can try to go to somewhere where the pay is high, even if the cost of living is high, and bet on the availability of opportunity there. Or you can try to pick somewhere that's a little bit smaller-- it might not have as many opportunities, it might be a little bit narrower, but the cost of living is lower, and you might be able to ride that city's growth as it ascends the ranks, as it were. So we've definitely seen, especially with the availability of remote and hybrid jobs in the last five years or so, we've definitely seen some of these smaller cities catch up a little bit. But there certainly is still a lot of appeal in some of these major metro areas, like New York or Seattle, in terms of attracting people looking for that large concentration of jobs. 

Jill Finlayson: What other kind of strategies do you put out there for job seekers, especially now that they're competing in an environment where everyone has access to AI, everybody can look perfect on paper, so how do you compete when being "qualified," quote, isn't enough? 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, so this is, I think, a really important thing that many job seekers don't necessarily think about. I would say most job seekers look at the job description and they compare it to their resume, and they think, OK, well, I check all the boxes on this job description-- this is a job that I should get. And in practice, just because you are a good fit for a job that you see doesn't guarantee that you're going to get that job because you're competing against everybody else. So I think there is a little bit of a different frame or paradigm that I would encourage job seekers to have as they apply to jobs, which is your goal is not to demonstrate that you are a fit for the job-- your goal is to demonstrate that you are the best fit for the job. 

And so one way that this shows up with AI, for example, is that nowadays, pretty much everybody can use AI to put out a custom cover letter or make slight tweaks to their resume to match a job description. But that doesn't necessarily set you apart from all of the other people who are using the same techniques. So there are some little things that you can do with AI. So for example, if you just ask AI to give your responses or to make your cover letter a little bit different from everybody else's, I find that that actually works surprisingly well. It's not perfect, but it gets you part of the way there. 

But certainly, when you're in an interview, that's also an opportunity to demonstrate why you are the best fit for the job. Because ultimately, you're selling your particular skills or experiences. And in a context like that, it's actually OK to recognize some of your areas where you don't have as much experience and say, hey, I don't have as much experience in skill X, but I actually bring a lot of experience on skill Y, and that's something that I think could be really helpful for this role because of ABC reason. 

So I think that reframing is just useful because it gives you a different mindset in terms of what you're focusing on as you're communicating with employers and applying to jobs. So yeah, ultimately, I would encourage folks to really think about how do I make myself appear as the best possible candidate, rather than just a candidate. 

Jill Finlayson: And as you're thinking about this, are there things you can do to make yourself the best candidate? Do certificates matter? Continuing learning? How are you demonstrating that you have the agility and skills that the companies are seeking? 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, there are lots of different ways that you can take this. So certainly, there are certifications or programs that you can do because those demonstrate that you've committed to a program or a course of study and have actually completed it. You can also look at doing projects on the side. So if you're applying to like a coding job and you have a GitHub that has some impressive side projects, those are absolutely something you can point to. Similarly, like a designer would have a portfolio or that sort of thing. 

So those are all different approaches that you can take. These are obviously things that are easier to demonstrate in an interview. And I think for a lot of folks, the difficulty that they're finding is getting from the job application to the interview, rather than from the interview onwards to the offer. But at the very least, once you have that interview in hand, these are all things that I think will help that conversion rate from interview to offer. 

Jill Finlayson: Any insights from the candid employee responses in terms of how to get that interview, how to get that referral? 

Daniel Zhao: Well, referrals is definitely one opportunity, I would say, for folks to not overindex into just one approach. So you should definitely be applying to jobs online, like through sites like Glassdoor, but also try to tap your network, so whether that's like friends and family, past coworkers. Alumni networks are a great way to try to make connections or to try to hear about jobs that are available. I would encourage folks to cast a wide net and try many different options, rather than just sticking to one. 

And I would also say that even in industries that are not expanding very quickly right now, there are certain pockets that might be doing better. So it might be different from city to city. It might be different from specific company to specific company. So to give one very broad example, health care is an industry that has been adding jobs very steadily over the last few years. And in fact, during past recessions, health care almost universally continues to grow. 

Many healthcare providers have jobs that are not healthcare-related jobs. So a hospital might need an IT administrator, for example, and that's a job that doesn't require any medical skills. Or you might have an adjacent industry. So maybe, for example, there's a tech company that sells primarily to healthcare providers. That's probably a tech company that's going to be doing it better than tech company that sells to, say, other tech companies right now. So there definitely are these pockets where there might be more opportunity for growth and more opportunities for jobs right now when things are a little bit softer. But certainly, it takes a lot of extra legwork to find those jobs. It takes a lot of extra research and a lot of extra effort. 

Jill Finlayson: So If you're currently job-hugging, how do you when it's safe to start looking again? What signals should we be looking for? 

Daniel Zhao: I think it is always a good time to be looking. It's always a good idea to keep your toe in the water just to see what's going on out there, what the market is like. Because sometimes, maybe you just luck into something that ends up being a better fit than what you currently have. But even if you don't, even if you just see, oh, well, there's not really anything out there that's exciting, that's still useful information for you to say. OK, well, it doesn't seem like the market's in a good spot for me right now-- let me just focus on really hunkering down at my current role. 

And so if you are sending out applications regularly, having interviews regularly, that will give you a better sense of where the market is so that you can go based on feel, like, if you start to feel the market pick up again, you can just ramp up your efforts there. And it also keeps your skills alive. So if you're doing an interview once a quarter or that sort of thing, then you're going to keep those interview skills fresh and sharp for when you do actually start to search more aggressively. 

Jill Finlayson: So looking ahead to 2026-- we got a whole year lying ahead of us here-- what is one trend that we're not talking about yet that you think could define 2026? 

Daniel Zhao: Well, looking backwards, one trend that we haven't really talked that much about is uncertainty. I definitely could have chosen uncertainty as the word of the year for 2025, given all the things that have happened, all of the economic uncertainty, all of the policy uncertainty. And unfortunately, I don't think that's really going to be better in 2026. We're still going to have a lot of uncertainty. There's still going to be a lot up in the air about whether AI creates more significant changes, whether the economy picks up or slows down, or whether there are policy changes that businesses or workers have to respond to. So there is still a lot of uncertainty on the table for 2026. 

And there are different things that I would say in terms of actually responding to that. So one thing that we've heard a lot from workers is this idea of chaos fatigue-- this idea that we are in crisis after crisis after crisis. And the last six years, since 2020 have just been an emotional roller coaster for people not just in the workplace, but in the world as well. 

And so from a mental health perspective, I think it really bears reminding yourself that you've got to take care of yourself, first and foremost. Whether you are in the work context, whether you're burned out, or whether you're searching for a job, these are all really hard situations to deal with. And it's really important to make sure that you are running the marathon. You're prepped for the marathon rather than prepped for a sprint. So that's one aspect. And then thinking more proactively, what can we actually do in response to that? Well, we can actually prepare for some of the uncertainty that might be coming down the pike. 

So there's some very basic ideas around like, OK, well, do I need to reevaluate my finances and save a little bit more, do I need to think about what skills or certifications or degrees that might be valuable moving forward, does it make sense to go back to school, does it make sense to try to pick up a project at the office that will boost my resume, not for right now, but for that next job down the line? So even though there is a lot of uncertainty probably coming down the pike in 2026, there are things that we can do to prepare just to set ourselves up in a defensive position so that when things start to open up again, we can take advantage of those opportunities. 

Jill Finlayson: So countering chaos fatigue and being more contemplative about what matters to us and how we can preserve our mental health, any final tips for heading out into 2026 so you thrive? 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, I think that it's a long year. And as we think about New Year's resolution, I think the number one mistake that everybody makes, myself included, is just being overly ambitious with the goals that we set and not actually sticking with them all the way through the year. And so whether that means breaking them up into shorter goals that you'll check in on each quarter, whether you have accountability buddies, ultimately, I think it's about setting up those structures for yourself to make sure that you get all the progress that you want on those goals all the way through the year, rather than just after a month or two saying, like, well, if that exercise plan really worked out quite as well as I'd hoped. 

So yeah, I think that's true in your career. That's true in your personal life as well. It's really about making sure that you can sustain those goals and that commitment all the way through the year. 

Jill Finlayson: Thank you so much, Daniel. I really appreciate the achievable goals, the accountability, and sticking with it throughout the year. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Daniel Zhao: Yeah, thanks again for having me, Jill. 

Jill Finlayson: And with that, I hope you enjoyed this latest in our long series of podcasts that we'll be sending your way every month. Please share with friends and colleagues who may be interested in taking this Future of Work journey with us. And make sure to check out to extention.berkeley.edu to find a variety of courses and certificates to help you thrive in this new working landscape. And to see what's coming up at EDGE in Tech, go ahead and visit edge.berkeley.edu. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll be back next month to continue our Future of Work journey. The Future of Work podcast is hosted by Jill Finlayson, produced by Sarah Benzuly, and edited by Matt DiPietro. 

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