Where does the millennial career go from here?

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At a recent work event, I overheard two C-suite executives joking about their panel discussion on how AI is changing hiring decisions for their businesses.

“Journalists are going to run with the headline that the five-year career plan is dead,” one remarked, laughing. The other rolled his eyes.

If you’ve heard any executive talk about AI—or know about the current state of hiring in America—you can already imagine what their discussion entailed. Hiring is at a standstill, and executives are looking for opportunities to increase efficiency—i.e., cut their workforces to the bone. Workers need to be nimble, ready to train themselves on AI tools; roles are already starting to evolve, and no one can say for certain what they’ll look like in a few months, let alone a few years.

The death of career planning was, in fact, the exact angle I had in mind, had I been covering the event for one of the outlets I previously wrote for. I felt a little embarrassed that my idea was so predictable, and that my takeaway from the executives’ chat was, apparently, so laughable to them. Then I got angry.

While the upended career plans of millions of Americans might be funny to CEOs and other business leaders, it’s causing deep anxiety and an almost existential despair for myself and most other 30-somethings I know. Routine layoffs, little hope of advancement, and general unease are now the workplace norm, incubated by a shaky economy dominated by just a handful of industries and a ruling class that seems practically gleeful to use new technology to put as many people out of work as possible.

Not being able to plan five years in the future might seem like a trivial concern to those with million-dollar stock packages and second (and third) homes they paid for in cash, but for the rest of us—“lower-value human capital,” according to one CEO—it’s a pretty scary reality.

Of course, millennials are not the first to experience this 30-something life crisis. Generations of workers before us have suffered job losses and recalibrated career paths, worried about their finances, and taken jobs they’re overqualified for to make ends meet. Economic uncertainty and general unfulfillment have left many a 30-something considering whether or not they’ve chosen the right path, and if they’d be better off applying to grad school or moving back home.

But coupled with these standard growing pains is the increasing belief among my cohort that it isn’t possible to plan for what’s to come, that our education, skills, and years of experience are being rendered meaningless, as far as career advancement goes. Even when a friend is doing well at work, they’re wondering when they, too, can expect the five-minute call from HR informing them they no longer have a consistent income, health insurance, or retirement benefits. Not to mention the identity they’ve built around the career they’ve invested over a decade in.

For many 30-somethings, their way of life and sense of self is imploding. Where do we go from here?

No generation of worker is exactly thrilled with the current state of the U.S. workplace, and I try to stay away from grand pronouncements about which age group has it “worst.” There is no definitive answer. Near-retirees worry about whether they will be able to continue pulling in the salaries and benefits they’ve been building their financial plans around for 30 years, while the struggle among entry-level workers to find meaningful employment has been extensively documented.

But, selfishly, I can’t help but lament the fact that this enormous workforce shakeup is happening right when I and most of my friends are meant to be hitting our stride in our careers. This is supposed to be the age when many workers transition into leadership roles and, crucially, make the major wage gains that set them up for the rest of their lives. Instead, once-stable careers—and even whole industries—are collapsing. Rather than eliminate entry-level roles, some employers will foist more work on younger, cheaper workers and cut their more experienced, and expensive, counterparts.

Many of the 30-somethings I know are out of work. Their stacked résumés mean they aren’t considered for lower-paying entry-level roles. They’re facing an impossible job search with few opportunities that meet their needs.

The sea change over the past few years has been headspinning. For millennials, tech jobs long seemed like “a guarantee of affluence and employability.” They were gold-standard opportunities to rectify some of the financial hangover we felt after being under- or unemployed during the Great Recession. Now tech companies routinely lay off tens of thousands, all the while cranking up performance pressures and trimming benefits for those who remain, leaving tech workers rife with anxiety and uncertainty. These once-beacons of millennial optimism have become another exercise in millennial humiliation.

Similarly, other well-paying professions are being hollowed out of experienced workers, with everyone from chefs to management consultants left with no choice but to train the LLMs, or take lower-paying work for which they are over-qualified. And as the white-collar jobs many were told to pursue are being eliminated, the only recourse business leaders seem to offer is to encourage workers to learn how to build and maintain data centers instead. That, too, doesn’t seem like the most sustainable career path.

That leaves us 30-somethings to face the difficulties that come with reskilling in an uncertain time, while simultaneously having decades ahead of us to work. What that work will be is a giant question mark.

Incidentally, Gallup regularly polls American optimism. The most recent results, released in February, find the percentage of U.S. adults who anticipate high-quality lives in five years fell to 59.2%—the lowest level since measurement began nearly two decades ago. By most measures, Americans are increasingly unhappy. Few of us seem to think we’ll be living the American Dream in the not-so-distant future.

That’s certainly the tenor of most job-related conversations I’ve had with friends over the past few months. We question how long we should try to hold onto careers that don’t seem to be going anywhere, but we don’t know what, exactly, we should do instead. Does a “safe” job exist? Do we go full cliché and apply to law school? Will lawyers still be a thing in five years?

Still, we’ve learned to pivot when the going gets tough, to push through recessions and stay afloat during record stretches of inflation.

This week, I attended the graduate school graduation ceremony of a dear friend, who received her master’s degree in social work. In 90 degree heat, proud parents, grandparents, children, siblings, and friends packed into the auditorium to celebrate the graduates, whooping and cheering and waving from the crowd, snapping blurry photos and gifting stuffed bears wearing graduation caps and gowns.

A sense of optimism was palpable in the space, and I was deeply moved thinking about all of the time and effort the grads, including my friend, had put into their degrees, believing that the work it allows them to pursue is still valuable, still meaningful.

The commencement speaker, a nun who has spent her life working to eliminate the death penalty, reminded graduates of the spark that ignited their interest in social work, the reason they had endured the countless nights of studying and untold stress to get to where they are. She advised everyone to fight to keep the fire within themselves lit.

“Keep blowing on those coals,” she said, a sentiment I typed into my Notes app.

Hard times are here, and more are sure to come. I feel no more certainty about what my future holds than I did when I walked into the auditorium, no more clarity on where my friends will end up in five years’ time, or what comes after this period of instability. Don’t worry: I won’t end this on a saccharine promise that everything will work out in the end. Even if it does, the journey to get there seems like it is going to be pretty unpleasant.

But as I sat taking in the sister’s message, watching hundreds of happy people celebrate the accomplishments of their loved ones, I also felt a tiny glimmer of hope, a hint of my resolve return. I can keep going, keep blowing on the coals, and adapt as best I can. I don’t know what else to do.