This message is for anyone who’s feeling overwhelmed by the job market right now.

For anyone who’s stressed about the AI specter of death hanging over your job, the "forever layoffs” and “job hugging” headlines, the DOGE downsizing tornadoes reverberating through the federal government, and the rising price of groceries and gasoline.

There are a million ways to calm your nervous system.
There are a million ways to make yourself more indispensable.
There are a million ways to proactively land or craft your next role.

But I want to talk about one of the most important skills:

Being with the discomfort of uncertainty

I’ve spent the past several weeks knee deep in articles, studies, and anecdotal accounts to better understand what’s actually going on in the job market right now. Why does it feel so damn spicy? How do we make the best possible decisions for our earning power and long-term stability? What does the future hold—or is that question a fool’s errand, only revealed in hindsight?

TLDR: We’re in a poly-crisis era.

Many of us lived through the dot-com bubble, 2008 housing crisis, and the post-COVID tech hiring hangover. We aren’t strangers to downturns and downsizing.

But right now, we’re at the intersection of shaky market and economic conditions, political upheaval, and unprecedented technical advancements—particularly with AI (which is responsible for 14x more layoffs than a mere two years ago).

As mere mortals, we cannot control any of this.

How humbling…

Yes, there are millions of things we can control to increase our agency within this evolving system—and our resilience if the worst happens. That’s exactly what I focus on with my clients, and am excited to share with Cornell alumni next month.

But my main point today is this:

If you are feeling overwhelmed, confused, or stressed, that is a completely normal and understandable response. You are not broken. You do not need to pathologize your experience. You do not need to hide in shame. You do not need to solve a problem right now (because you can’t!). You are normal. You make sense. You’re living through a wild moment in history that will be studied for millennia.

When I sit with that truth, something loosens. My white-knuckle grip on certainty relaxes just a little, and I gain access to a little more creativity, strategy, humor, and hope.

I’m curious: What shifts when you accept that you cannot know everything right now?

Onward!
Grace

P.S. I highly recommend How Not To Know, Simone Stolzoff’s newest book about increasing our capacity to tolerate uncertainty. He’s also the author of another one of my favorite and most recommended books: The Good Enough Job.