Jobs? 15+ Jobs? Perhaps
5-7 Careers? No. The article (as with most in this genre) relies basically on speculation - certainly not any formal evidence or data. Plus the distinction between job vs career is fuzzy at best.
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Itâs not that unusual. Iâm a boomer and I had at least seven in 45 years, ranging from retail management to I.T.
I watched what automation did to US manufacturing before economics pushed it offshore. And now AI is starting to claim more jobs. Even the Florida Bar has been educating lawyers about the changes AI could bring to their profession.
That may be true, but there seems to be a lot of people interested in mid-career training.
https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/
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Itâs not that unusual. Iâm a boomer and I had at least seven in 45 years, ranging from retail management to I.T.
What are the 7 careers? Were several of them âjobsâ as you were gaining your skills in IT?
Why would IT not be a solid career on its own for the last 45 years?
Even the Florida Bar has been educating lawyers about the changes AI could bring to their profession.
No question about it - as is true for my own career which spans medicine and law. I view it as an opportunity to innovate and expand.
The classic concern we all hear about is the risk that AI will ironically reduce the need for computer programmers. Nonsense. Yes it is true that classic entry level coding jobs may become more scarce. But even more jobs will open up for those building AI software, categorizing knowledge, teaching clients how to utilize AI, auditing/testing AI, scaling/monitoring AI and IT for companies small and large, and countless other needs. Itâs hard for me to imagine someone with training in IT or computer/software engineering of any sort lacking job opportunities. But yes - the industry will evolve so these people will periodically move from job to job, quite likely turning lemons into lemonade.
Iâm not going to publish my c.v. but to name a few, I worked in retail management, sales, and transportation before I saw my first PC.
Because I started work before IBM and Apple started making PCs?
I got lucky. I knew DOS and Lotus when the company I worked for decided they need to modernize. I got the âcomputer guyâ job and learned what I needed from books and later from the internet.
This is what youâre not getting. You may think like that, not everyone does. Stability is REALLY important for some people. for some people a job is a way to pay the bills. itâs not a vocation for everyone.
For others doing a job they love with people they enjoy working with, being laid off, being forcibly or involuntarily removed from a job, especially one you may REALLY enjoy is heartbreaking.
And with high unemployment rates at the moment, it may not be easy to get a new job.
My daughter was let go in February last year. despite applying for literally HUNDREDS of jobs, it took her more than 6 months to get a new job, and even then it was because of someone she knew.
She was fortunate that she still lived at home with us, otherwise she may have got evicted.
Donât get me wrong. Change is good, people growing and learning is good for a lot of people, but Seismic change when your employment is ripped out from under you is not.
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The underlying issue is how much power we have over the jobs we do and the career(s) we pursue. There have always been people who move companies, roles, careers and jobs more often than others and some who seek stability, but there is a huge difference between (say) my Father in the UK boom of the 1960s, who once moved between three completely different jobs, one after another, in a week, raising his income and status each time because employees were in demand and thus in control and people who have to start again often because their skills and value is seen as disposable.
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Stability is REALLY important for some people. for some people a job is a way to pay the bills. itâs not a vocation for everyone.
It seems to me the best way to achieve stability is to develop a skill that is valuable to employers. That doesnât necessarily mean a formal degree or license - it just means something likely to be marketable / helpful in the economy and thus something that distinguishes you in a pool of applicants.
That is as true in 2026 as it was in 1900 or 1950.
For others doing a job they love with people they enjoy working with, being laid off, being forcibly or involuntarily removed from a job, especially one you may REALLY enjoy is heartbreaking
That description is not really compatible with a well-functioning market economy. Employers need to focus on a team that has skills useful to their company. Employees need to focus on maintaining and building skills that will make them marketable to employers. Rotation among employees and employers is healthy for both.
Until employers decide they need to focus on other things 
Amazon laying off about 16,000 corporate workers
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Who is actually more stable - the worker who has a skill that is useful in the economy and continually refines that skill, or the worker who has been in the same job with the same company for 25 years but in truth could be fired tomorrow on a whim?
All of which is good for the economy. If those employers could not easily lay off those workers then they would be reluctant to hire worker for new projects too.
Amazon and Meta in particular are amazing places for employees to maintain and grow their skill set - whether they are tech workers or involved in other aspects of the business. Any worker who has taken advantage of those opportunities should be able to transfers those skills to a new job fairly quickly. Maybe in a few years things will switch and they will go back to their former employer.
That flexibility is really, really good for employers, for employees, and for the economy overall. Bravo.
Sound great. Iâd like to visit your world someday.
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That would be fine if one were the only diamond in a mountain of coal. But most of us arenât that special because most of us are focussed on developing skills that will distinguish us in a pool of applicantsâand those are often the very same skills.
Over the course of my career I developed a portfolio of valuable skills that should have made me eminently marketableâuntil the 2008 financial crisis, when the New York metropolitan area shed 55,000-60,000 jobs in the financial sector and mine was one of them. A valuable skill means little in an environment shaped by a big shock.
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But not for human flourishing.
Thereâs general consensus that âflexible firing enables flexible hiringââwhich may be good for a particular company or sectorâbut less consensus that mass layoffs of the kind weâre discussing are good for an economy overall. Some of their deleterious effects:
- Demand destruction: mass layoffs reduce aggregate purchasing power. Note that people who lose their jobs as part of a mass layoff are often out of work for a prolonged period of time, which has a profound effect on their total lifetime earnings in addition to the immediate impact on their spending.
- Waste of human capital: workers who have been part of a mass layoff often face prolonged unemployment and skill atrophy. The economy loses the return on the prior investment in their training and institutional knowledge, even if the companyâs individual shareholders might benefit.
- Misaligned incentives for hiring and firing decisions: boom and bust cycles in hiring and firing are often less the result of genuine labor misallocation that needs to be corrected than the result of C-suite incentives to juice the share price. Which leads to âŚ
- Asymmetry of gains and losses: a companyâs individual shareholders may benefit from the (often temporary) boost to the share price. The costsâreduced income, loss of health insurance, local or regional economic decline, reduced tax revenue, etcâare borne by employees (even those who werenât laid off), their communities, and often, other companies.
2008 was indeed a once in a lifetime (or at least worst in a lifetime) event for many people.
I can imagine it was particularly bad for those in the financial sector and bad again for those in NYC.
It was equally bad for people with âsecureâ lifetime jobs and for self-employed people in many industries.
So yes, that may well be an example of a time where many needed to re-invent themselves and shift to a different career.
I donât think that happened 7 times in your lifetime however. Nor is that the current status of the economy.
What alternative do you suggest?
Compare employment laws in France vs USA - then compare the economy in France with that of USA. Which do you think results in an overall better standard of living for the population?
workers who have been part of a mass layoff often face prolonged unemployment and skill atrophy
It depends what you call a âmass layoffâ. No question 2008 was a failure of regulation on a national scale and it had once in a lifetime repercussions for many people.
But Amazon or Meta laying off people is not a âmass layoffâ on a national scale. In the setting of skilled workers and 3-5% unemployment, there is no reason they should face either prolonged unemployment or skill atrophy. Many of them could no doubt get instant short-term freelance jobs as they search for their next permanent position.
Iâm done. Weâre going to have to agree to disagree.
As a Manager and an employee, the world you see doesnât exist to me. Companies hiring with no regard for long term mental wellbeing for their employees is not a good thing.
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Well, Iâm old enough for it to have happened several times, and I did re-invent myself twice when I might have preferred not to.
It wasnât in 2007, either. 
@webwalrus made many of the points Iâd have made in response to this. Iâll add one other point - in his 40=year career, the BiL never once had to apply for different jobs; never had to polish his CV to try and make it attractive to new employer; never had to compete with yoinger/older/better qualified/less well qualified candidates; never had to go through staged recruitments in the hope that he might be the one; never had to deal with smug interviewers and ignorant recruitment agents; never had the uncertainly of not knowing how long he and his wife would have to manage on his redundancy/severance package before th next job came along.
An he wasnât that unusual. Many of my contemporaries spend their whole working lives in the same organisation - banks, insurance companies, local authorities, the civil service - or were practicing professionals - doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants - who spend working lifetimes doing essentially the same thing. When we started out, we could be confident of two things: (1) we could always get a job and (2) there were jobs for life. I donât believe either of those is true for the current generation of 20-somethings.
Sorry - rant over
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If you have current skills you can still always get a job. I think the mistake is anyone assuming he can just coast and not continually reinvent himself, whether working for the same employer or not.
not knowing how long he and his wife would have to manage on his redundancy/severance package before th next job came along
Why not get some sort of temporary job while job-seeking? That not only helps with the financial stress but it also lets you take your time so you are not rushed to make a new choice.
doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants - who spend working lifetimes doing essentially the same thing
None of those do âessentially the same thingâ for a lifetime. Each of those professions has changed quite notably over the last 40 years or so - and yes, doctors, dentists, lawyers, and accountants reinvent themselves continually.
What do you mean be âbetter standard of livingâ? And for whom? Iâll take the French social safety net, thank you, not to mention more collective bargaining, excellent public transport, and more paid time off in lieu of just more stuff. Iâm a big advocate of a robust infrastructure of public goods generally. Iâd take the higher tax rate that goes with it, too. (I worked for a major multinational with subsidiaries everywhere; labor restrictions didnât keep us from hiring people where we needed to.)
The authors of the Stanford study referenced in this article do address how the public sector might balance the trade-offs between layoffs and job protections.
The recent layoffs at Meta, Amazon, and Block would most definitely qualify as âmass layoffsâ under the US Federal WARN act.
I suspect weâre going to have to agree to disagree on whether one company laying off 16,000 people at once is a good thing.