Note to Generation X workers: the workplace is always changing

RTÉ News​

19-05-2025

Analysis: Historical analysis provides a harsh truth that people who bank on the world of work never changing are likely to lose out
The world of work is always changing and rarely for the better. The career woes of Generation X workers, those born between 1965 and 1980, have been widely discussed, and there are some genuinely worrying trends.
A recent New York Times article channels R.E.M to start with the ominous claim that "it's the end of work as we knew it". This article details how whole industries, especially those involving creativity such as magazine publishing, writing for TV and movies and graphic design, are in free fall. Rapid developments in technology, especially artificial intelligence are swiftly making once lucrative jobs obsolete. As a result, many Gen X workers who invested in building careers in these fields are finding it impossible to make a living.
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There have been numerous such news stories, opinion pieces and reports dealing with the changing nature of work over the last 25 to 30 years. Some deal with the role of technology, others with where we work, especially the swift rise and the apparently swift decline in remote work as the pandemic waxed and waned. There are also pieces which cover who we work for (the rise of the gig economy) and changes in workforce personnel (such as the increasing presence of women, immigrants and older workers in many workplaces).
As an organisational psychologist, I have been reading books about the changing nature of work since the 1990s. The theme of all these books, articles and reports is that things are not the same as they used to be and that workplace, careers, co-workers and the like are often worse than they used to be.
The complaint that things are not the same as they used to be, and usually worse than they once were, has a long pedigree. The sentiment that "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book" has been attributed variously to Cicero, Socrates and ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform fragments.
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While its exact provenance is very much in doubt, there is no doubt that the idea that things are not the same and not as good as they used to has been with us for a very long time. The idea that the world of work is rapidly changing (usually for the worse) is part of a much longer set of complaints about how the world is getting worse each day, but much of what has been written about the changing nature of work in the last 30 years assumes that this is a recent change. It isn't.
In a chapter written with Warren Tierney in The Cambridge Handbook of the Changing Nature of Work, I have argued that the belief that the world of work is changing is in large part the result of making the wrong comparisons. Particularly in the US, the period from 1945 to 1980 represented an unusual period of growth and stability when it was possible for a single breadwinner to develop a career that would support him (at this time, breadwinners were almost always male) and his family in relative comfort, often working for the same company for decades.
This deeply unusual time led many people to expect that a steady career in the same field, and often in the same company, was the norm and that the workplace would not change in meaningful ways. But if you take a longer perspective, massive changes in the world of work have been common and often jolting. Two examples stand out as particularly important and illustrative. First, the proportion of the workforce engaged in agriculture has changed massively over the last 75 years and has undergone almost a complete transformation over the last 150 years.
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Across the world, there has been a decisive shift from an economy where most families worked on a small farm to economies where industry and or knowledge work have become the dominant form of work. The change from agricultural economies to industrial economies changed where people lived, who they interacted with and when and how they worked - and these changes dwarf the changes we are witnessing in the current economy.
Much of what has been written in the last 30 years about the changing world of work has focused on the role of technology, and the implication is that we are going through an unprecedented technological revolution. Technology is changing, but we have gone much through bigger technological revolutions in the past, particularly the introduction of the automobile.
In 1900, there were over 20 million horses in the United States. The business or raising horses, feeding and stabling them and cleaning up after them (many of the beautiful brownstone houses in New York City are set six to eight feet above the street in part because the streets were often filled with horse manure at the time they were built,) represented a major part of the economy. The woes faced by Gen X workers in creative fields are nothing compared to the problems of saddle makers, blacksmiths or those involved in the manufacture of horse-drawn vehicles in the US in the early 1900s.
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The world of work is changing, and often in scary and unpredictable ways, but this is the historical norm, not the exception. We have been lulled into a nostalgia for that deeply unusual period in the 1950s to 1970s when the world of work seemed stable and predictable.
This historical analysis may be cold comfort to Gen X workers who careers are collapsing, but it is a harsh truth that people who bank on the world of work never changing are likely to lose out. The best you can do is continue to build skills that are valuable and transferable and to realise that other generations have successfully weathered these changes.
In 1900, prospects looked grim for saddle makers and horse feed lots, but most of the people engaged in these businesses moved on and adapted to the new world of automobiles. The current cry that AI will change everything is just a variation on the cry over the years that other technologies will change everything, and it is probably only partially true. More than 2,500 years ago, a Greek philosopher reminded us that the only constant is change. The world of work is changing, just like it always has.