Man explains why the concept of 'career' doesn't exist anymore and it's a reflection of our times

You have a job. You work, and you earn money. Whatever your position is, you make a living each day. However, jobs are not a viable construct, and the notion that we will earn our living in the future through an employer-employee relationship is destined for economic oblivion. The pandemic has jarred us all and has forced us to change in ways unthinkable. The norm now includes masks, quarantines, sanitizers, and social distancing. Webcams, online school, and working from home are becoming commonplace in the workplace. Either way, it is safe to say we are all heading toward job extinction. One woman recently posted a TikTok stating that she believes we are at “the death of careers.”

Famous TikToker (@jordan_the_stallion8) who stitched it and agreed to the statement recently went viral. “There is no such thing as a career anymore, come here,” Jordan says, “because nobody wants a career anymore.” No, he is not glorifying the same rhetoric that greedy capitalists say —“Nobody wants to work anymore.” Instead, Jordan believes that it is because of how the economy in this country has progressed. “The new workforce, the new generation workforce, is not working and getting promoted to have a good long-lasting job. We are all working to survive,” he explains. “You cannot have a career if every single day you are worried about keeping your job or not.”

The game is changing. A new philosophy is emerging, and the next two decades will most likely cleanse us of waiting for the job creation numbers to come out. We are entering a stage of massive layoffs when the cost of living has increased to a staggering amount. Living is more expensive than ever, and it is getting harder for people to purchase resources. The housing market is in a crisis because nobody can afford homes like they used to, rent prices are through the roof, and the cost of eggs has gone as high as $7 for a dozen large eggs. Inflation rates coupled with the ever-present risk of losing your job means that people are not holding on to their jobs like they used to.

“Companies are not instilling any trust at all with their workers,” Jordan explains, sharing a story about someone from his last job. “The last job I had, there was somebody, who was working at that job for about 20 years, and you wanna know what happened? That company laid him off. They fired him via email on his day off.” Twenty years of loyalty means nothing to the corporations in this era and the people that lead them, “so if companies can do that, what’s the point of actually wanting a career?” He adds, “We are just looking for jobs that can pay well enough to keep our groceries in our house.”

The Wall Street Journal reported the job cuts at the start of 2023 were concentrated in the tech industry. Facebook parent, Meta, eliminated 10,000, Google parent company, Alphabet Inc., trimmed off 12,000 jobs, and Microsoft laid off 10,000 workers in January. Moreover, Meta said it would cut roughly 10,000 jobs over the coming months, its second wave of mass layoffs. Jordan believes that the only way to survive now is to hop around for better-paying jobs rather than stay in one place for too long and end up unemployed. While this may not be the same as the “death” of a career, it sure is extinction, and sooner or later, the two blocks of the economy as we know it —companies and jobs, will be washed away by the solvent of information.