To ring in the new year, Glassdoor published its worklife trends report, highlighting 5 major trends that were poised to bubble up in 2025. Now halfway through the year, let’s revisit these trends to see how they’ve played out thus far.

Trend 1: Employees’ pent-up resentment will boil over
Trend 2: Falling down the career ladder will stunt pay and career growth for workers
Trend 3: Gen Z will make up 1 in 10 managers in 2025
Trend 4: Side hustle culture fuels new paths to career growth
Trend 5: Employers are investing in holistic wellbeing
Methodology

Trend 1: Employees’ pent-up resentment will boil over

Recap

About 2 in 3 professionals on Glassdoor feel stuck in their careers heading into 2025. Career opportunities ratings on Glassdoor fell 3% from 2022 to 2024. The quits rate fell from its peak of 3% in 2022 to 1.9% as workers feel trapped in their current roles. Rising resentment from dissatisfied employees risks a wave of revenge quitting in 2025.

So far in 2025

Thus far in 2025, employees’ satisfaction with their career opportunities have hit a plateau. Current employees in particular have seen their career opportunities ratings on Glassdoor remain unchanged at 3.67 in 2024 and 3.68 in 2025 year-to-date. 

By contrast, former employees are continuing to see their satisfaction with the career opportunities they had at their former employers decline, falling from 2.68 in 2024 to 2.53 in 2025. This marks a shift from the “Covid grace” period, when former employees were much more forgiving.

During the pandemic, career opportunities ratings from former employees peaked at 2.95 out of 5 as workers were more understanding of tough decisions like furloughs or layoffs. But as the labor market weakened in 2023 and 2024, former employees are now more likely to be laid-off workers who are more upset.

The industries that have seen the largest declines in career opportunities ratings in 2025 are largely ones that have been affected by policy uncertainty under the new administration or that are still bearing the brunt of the ongoing malaise in white-collar industries. 

So are workers quitting more in 2025? Despite the softening job market (which usually reduces worker willingness to quit), the quits rate has increased modestly from 1.9% in December 2024, bouncing between 2–2.1% through April 2025. While this may not sound like a large difference, at the scale of the U.S. economy, it means that almost a million (943,000) more people quit their jobs from January through April than would have if the quits rate had stayed at 1.9% since December.

Verdict: Leans correct

While we haven’t seen an explosion in rage quitting, the rebound in the quits rate and continued pessimism workers have around their career opportunities point to a job market where the resentment we highlighted at the end of last year is still gripping workers.

Trend 2: Falling down the career ladder will stunt pay and career growth for workers

Recap

The weakening job market means more workers are falling down the career ladder. 17% of workers who changed employers saw a pay cut in 2024, up from 15% in 2023. This share of job changers taking a pay cut was even higher for tech (18%), managers (22%) and managers transitioning to individual contributor roles (32%).

So far in 2025

The job market has endured a wave of economic uncertainty in 2025. The job market has avoided falling off a cliff, but continues to be stuck in a malaise where hiring remains sluggish and headwinds like tariffs, federal cuts, immigration restrictions and more are a drag. 

Overall, however, Glassdoor data shows that there hasn’t been a significant increase in the share of job switchers falling down the career ladder and taking a pay cut. In 2025 year-to-date, 17% of job switchers took a pay cut, the same as in 2024. Similarly, job switchers in the tech industry, who are managers and who are managers transitioning to individual contributors have all seen little change in the share of them settling for lower pay.

By some measures, wage growth has continued to slow. For example, the Atlanta Fed Wage Growth Tracker shows that median wage growth slowed to 4.4% in May 2025, but crucially, they also show that median wage growth for job switchers was equal to that of job stayers in May.

Usually, job switching is the best way to gain leverage to negotiate a raise internally or externally, but the slower hiring environment now means fewer opportunities for job switchers to find those higher paying jobs and more involuntary job switchers who lost their jobs and are settling for lower pay.

Verdict: More data needed

The share of job switchers who have experienced a pay cut is elevated in 2025, but not higher than in 2024. If the low hiring environment continues, then wage growth may slow further as job switchers have to settle for lower pay.

Trend 3: Gen Z will make up 1 in 10 managers in 2025

Recap

As more Gen Z workers rise the ranks, Gen Z will comprise 1 in 10 managers this year, following a similar trajectory to past generations. The bar on what makes a good manager is rising at the same time, emphasizing emotional intelligence. 

So far in 2025

In April, the share of managers that are Gen Z hit 10% for the first time. To some extent, this was a demographic inevitability as Gen Z aged into the workforce. However, despite some claims that Gen Z would radically break with previous generations in their desire to climb the corporate ladder, the newest generation workforce continues to pursue similar goals.

In 2025, millennials are also now a larger share of the managerial workforce than Gen Xers for the first time. And if aging trends continue, Gen Z will likely make up a larger share of managers than Baby Boomers in late 2025 or 2026.

It’s no surprise that Gen Z workers continue to seek out managerial opportunities as they are often a shortcut to faster career and salary growth. In Glassdoor data, workers who transitioned from individual contributors to managers saw a 11% bump in salary in 2025 compared to 7% for workers who stayed individual contributors.

That being said, how might this new crop of Gen Z managers help change the workforce? In a survey of Glassdoor professionals, many workers think Gen Z will bring an increased emphasis on flexibility and worker wellbeing. Ironically, in a world of rapidly advancing AI technologies, digital skills don’t rank as the most important thing professionals think  Gen Z managers will bring; instead it’s human attitudes around caring for workers that professionals highlight.

Verdict: Spot on

Gen Z continues to seek out opportunities to climb the management ranks. Increasing pressure will be on them to meet the rising expectations of workers for managers who demonstrate emotional intelligence.

Trend 4: Side hustle culture fuels new paths to career growth

Recap

Side hustle culture will continue to expand as Americans look for new ways to grow their careers and income. Entrepreneurship has been elevated since the pandemic and younger workers in particular are more amenable to side gigs.

So far in 2025

For workers, hustle culture can manifest in many different ways from working a traditional 9-to-5 to entrepreneurship to side jobs. As the economy has slowed in 2025, the tenor of hustle culture has shifted slightly.

Prime-age (25–54) labor force participation hit a high watermark of 83.9% in July & August 2024, the highest level since 2001, but since then, participation has cooled to 83.4% as of May. That’s still a high level by historical standards, but workers are not as encouraged about their job market prospects today as they were a year ago.

For entrepreneurship, new business applications are essentially unchanged since last year, averaging 435,440 per month in H2 2024 and 433,982 per month in H1 2025.

Similarly, the share of the employed who are self-employed declined slightly from 10.4% in H2 2024 to 10.2% in H1 2025, or about 338,000 fewer self-employed workers.

On the flip side, the side hustle side of hustle culture seems to still be going strong. Multiple job holders as a share of the employed rose slightly from 5.3% in H2 2024 to 5.4% in H1 2025. Holding employment constant, that means approximately 186,000 more multiple job holders. Interest in side hustles are also spiking in Glassdoor with the number of new users joining the Side Gigs bowl growing 150% year-over-year from February 2024 to February 2025.

However, the push for side hustles may reflect concerns about the job market. A survey of Glassdoor professionals found that for 67% of respondents, the primary motivation for a side hustle would be to boost income, while career pivot (18%), passion (10%) and skill building (5%) were all regarded as less important motivations.

Verdict: Mixed

In 2025 so far, entrepreneurship and prime-age labor force participation have slowed slightly while the share of workers doing multiple jobs has increased slightly, likely reflecting a desire to boost income amid an uncertain economy. Rather than a cultural shift towards portfolio careers, this seems more like an nuanced economic shift as workers responsibly diversify a portfolio of income streams.

Trend 5: Employers are investing in holistic wellbeing

Recap

About half (48%) of employees feel it’s more  difficult to prioritize their mental health at work compared to 5 years ago. Employers are responding: the share of employees reporting access to mental health care benefits rose 18 percentage points from 2019 to 2024. Other benefits like parental leave, family medical leave and bereavement leave also feature as benefits that have seen large expansions in access.

So far in 2025

The mental health challenges employees are facing show no signs of abating. Burnout is an ongoing crisis with mentions of burnout in Glassdoor reviews spiking 73% year-over-year as of May 2025. Reviews about burnout often refer to the cumulative effect of several years of layoffs and understaffing wearing on employees who remain. Rising economic uncertainty in 2025 is another added layer increasing stress for workers.

Glassdoor research has found that burnout drags down employees’ opinions of their employer and drives costly turnover for otherwise-satisfied (and likely high-performing) employees, making it critical that employers address this slow-burn burnout crisis.

While benefits alone can’t solve burnout, they can help. Unfortunately, some of the benefits that might help target burnout have seen a decline in offerings so far in 2025. For example, access to work from home and mental health care both have expanded dramatically since 2019, but respectively, they have taken a step back or stagnated in availability in 2025.

Other benefits like health/flexible spending accounts, fertility assistance and leave have taken more priority so far in 2025. While these benefits can help contribute to employee wellbeing, they may not be as direct in addressing employee mental health concerns.

Verdict: Warning signs

While employers have made significant strides since the pandemic in offering benefits that advance employee wellbeing, especially on mental health, burnout is a burgeoning crisis among employees. And access to some of the benefits that might be best suited to help address burnout is not expanding. This is an area to watch out for worsening employee wellbeing, especially if a slowing economy crimps benefits budgets.

Methodology

Trend 1: Employees’ pent-up resentment will boil over

The data in the first and second chart comes from ratings (on a 1–5 star scale) of career opportunities ratings from employee reviews of their employers on Glassdoor. For this analysis, we only include ratings from U.S. full-time or part-time workers and split the results by whether reviewers were current or former employees grouped by the year the job was held. Industries are based on Glassdoor-defined industries. Data covers January 1, 2019 through June 12, 2025.

The quits rate data in the third chart comes from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics based on data updated through the April 2025 release. The estimate of 943,000 more people quitting their jobs is calculated as the difference in the actual observed quits and the quits that would occur if the quits rate were fixed at the 1.9% baseline.

Trend 2: Falling down the career ladder will stunt pay and career growth for workers

The data in the first chart is based on an analysis of job changes based on Glassdoor pay data. For salary reports for users that were current employees at the time the report was submitted, we define a job change by linking the subsequent salary report the user submitted as a current employee where the employer differs from their original salary report. Pay data is self-reported so it may be unrepresentative or undersample from users that do not return to provide subsequent salaries. Additionally, this only examines people who have found a new job and so does not include people who left a job and have not been able to find a new one, potentially underestimating pay declines.

We filter to job changes where both the original and subsequent salary are from U.S. full-time or part-time employees. We also filter out outliers where salaries are reported below minimum wage or above $1,000,000/year as well extremely high raises above 900%.

Original salary reports are from June 1, 2008 to June 8, 2025 but the data is grouped by the year of the subsequent salary report. The industry is the Glassdoor-defined industry of the original salary report (e.g., “information technology” means the user was originally employed in that sector and their subsequent salary report is for a job that may or may not be in “information technology”).

Manager jobs are identified based on the job title provided by the user. If the job title includes phrases like “manager” or “management”, it is identified as a manager job, excluding some cases like “community manager” and “case manager” that are not likely to be people manager jobs. Additionally, we also include some titles for frontline managers (e.g., “supervisor”, “team lead”, “shift lead”) and executives and C-suite members (e.g., “vice president”, “director”, “chief financial officer”).

The data in the second chart is a recreation of data from the Atlanta Fed Wage Growth Tracker.

Trend 3: Gen Z will make up 1 in 10 managers in 2025

The data in the first chart in this section is based on an analysis of Current Population Survey data accessed via IPUMS CPS, University of Minnesota, www.ipums.org. This data was updated through the May 2025 CPS microdata release. Generations are delineated using the Pew Research Center definitions (Gen Z: born 1997-2012, Millennials: 1981-1996, Gen X: 1965-1980, Baby Boomers: 1946-1964, Silent Generation: 1928-1945). Managers are defined using the Census 2018 occupational codes, including “0010-0440: Management Occupations” and other occupations that are “first-line supervisors”.

The second chart uses the same pay change data as in Trend 2, but instead of measuring the share of job switchers that receive a pay cut, we calculate the median of individual-level pay growth.

The results in the third chart of this section are based on a poll of 588 professionals conducted on the Glassdoor community platform May 20–27, 2025. The question was “How do you think workplaces will benefit from Gen Z managers?” with possible responses: “Flexible hours”, “Embracing digital tools”, “Casual work environment” and “Employee well-being”. The sample was not reweighted and may not be nationally representative.

Trend 4: Side hustle culture fuels new paths to career growth

The data in the first chart is the prime-age labor force participation rate from the Current Population Survey accessed from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics up to date through the May 2025 release. The prime-age labor force participation rate is defined as the share of the age 25–54 population that is employed or actively looking for work. The prime-age subset is often used to remove workers at ages where it is common to be in school or near/at retirement, where changing demographic and educational attainment trends can skew the results.

The data in the second chart is from the Business Formation Statistics dataset from the U.S. Census Bureau, updated through the May 2025 release. We report business applications, which are based on applications to the IRS for an Employer Identification Number (EIN), averaged across the year to a monthly rate.

The data in the third chart is the self-employed (unincorporated and incorporated) share of employment from the Current Population Survey from the BLS, updated through May 2025. Similarly, the data in the fourth chart shows the share of the employed who are multiple job holders (summing together multiple job holders where the jobs are full-time or part-time). The 338,000 fewer self-employed workers and 186,000 more multiple job holders are calculated by applying the baseline value to data in 2025 through May, holding the employment level constant at the year-to-date average for 2025.

The results in the fifth chart of this section are based on a poll of 811 professionals conducted on the Glassdoor community platform May 27–June 3, 2025. The question was “If you picked up a side hustle today, what would be your main reason?” with possible responses: “Boost my income”, “Pursue a passion”, “Build new skills” and “Career pivot from my 9 to 5”. The sample was not reweighted and may not be nationally representative.

Trend 5: Employers are investing in holistic wellbeing

The data in the first chart shows the share of Glassdoor reviews that mention “burnout”-related terms from current or former, full-time or part-time employees grouped by the month the review was submitted. Related terms include different grammatical forms of burnout like “burnt out” or “burned us out”.

The data in the second and third charts is based on employee reviews of their benefits on Glassdoor, filtered to U.S. full-time employees, including current and former employees, grouped by the year the user held the job. This analysis is based on reviews submitted from January 1, 2019 through May 31, 2025. This data may not be representative as it may oversample industries and occupations that offer more benefits.