Making predictions for 2026

Hello and welcome to Pondering Careers for 2026! It’s a big, bold, bright new year, but also very hard to believe it’s 2026 already – I keep thinking it’s a typo when I see ‘2026’ on things I want to watch on netflix…

If you’ve been with me on this writing journey for the past few years, then you’ll know I tend to share my ideas every couple of weeks, meandering around topics generally related to work, learning, the future, and how we see ourselves in amongst all of this. If you’re new, then welcome – I’m into running, sleeping, drinking wine, and people who leave comments on my posts. Bonus points if you make me laugh.

To get us back into the swing of things for 2026, and inspired (as usual) by Chris Webb‘s excellent set of Bold Predictions, I thought it would be good to start off by sharing some of the things I’ve been pondering about what 2026 could bring.

This type of horizon thinking is fraught with risk – I have no crystal ball or DeLorean to show me the future, and putting any kind of prediction forward invites an opportunity for me to show how wrong and out-of-touch I am. But it’s also useful – thinking about the future and what is most likely to happen next can help us plan and make more deliberate decisions about what we do next.

This week, when I decided that I wanted to offer some sort of future predictions, I started by doing two things.

First, I opened my matching article from last year (2025). I wanted to see what I had predicted, but also evaluate how close I had gotten to reality.

Next, I let myself indulge my curiosity and gave into the 2016 trend, which meant that I dug deep into my instagram archives to see what I was doing this time ten years ago. This corker of a video was pretty much where I was at back then (and I’m not much further along now with video…)

From these two actions – looking back 12 months, and ten years – I realised that I’d overestimated how much would change in a year, and underestimated what would change in a decade.

Bill Gates said the same thing about how much we can get done:

‘Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.’

In this context, Bill is talking about how we often have grand ideas and big plans about all the things we’ll achieve in just one year, which don’t often eventuate, but that when we look back ten years we can see how much we actually managed to achieve.

I feel like the same principle applies to the predictions I made at the start of last year; I vastly overestimated how much would change in just 12 months.

One year ago, at the start of 2025, I made two predictions:

1 – Transparency will become integral in the way we work – spurred on by AI, people and organisations will need to become transparent about their processes, including when and where they use AI (and the inevitable technological advancements that are yet to come). Essentially, we’ll all need to get used to ‘showing our working out’.

2 – We’ll move away from ‘remote’ and towards true flexibility – people are done with being micromanaged and burnt out, and companies who are competing for skilled and experienced workers will need to offer more than just money. True flexibility offers something that is highly desirable for employees and employers.

And while I think that we have moved slightly forward in both those directions, we’re not as far along as I perhaps thought we would be.

Prediction One – Transparency

For Transparency – I thought we’d see a raft of organisations publishing AI protocols, and we’ve seen some move this way but not all. Anthropic continue to do some great work in being public about their models and the technology and ethics behind them, but they’re an outlier. Microsoft’s last publication on the topic of transparency in AI was in October 2024, and Grok’s last report is also from 2024.

Instead of moving towards transparency, we’ve just become better at spotting AI slop. Crowned ‘word of the year’ by Macquarie Dictionary, AI slop is generally low quality content that’s been created quickly using an AI tool in order to save content creators time while still allowing them to grab your attention. They estimate that over 20% of content we see is now created by AI, and it’s reached the point where we’ve begun to look for the flaws and typos to help us identify work that was created by humans.

Here’s a perfect example of AI slop, created by ChatGPT:

So I was wrong, in that people don’t seem to be overly concerned (more than they were) with being transparent with their processes, but we do seem to be more aware that we need to critically evaluate the content we’re consuming.

Prediction Two – Flexibility

My second prediction was about a shift from remote to true flexibility, and, in hindsight, this was probably more about wishful thinking. We did move forward in some ways, for example, Australia extended the right to disconnect to small business employees and it looks like NZ may follow suit at some point, and in the UK around 1 million agency workers gained the right to guaranteed hours.

On a less formal level, while reports continue to show that the distribution of unpaid labour hasn’t changed much in households since 2002, personally I feel like the content I’m seeing around work-life balance and flexibility is changing (although perhaps that’s just my algorithm?) – I see more people talking about how we all need to do better at balancing our lives with our work, and taking responsibility for unpaid as well as paid labour.

For example, I see more posts talking about moving to a 4 day work week, like the model proposed by 4 day week, as well as more posts encouraging equitable distribution of domestic labour (a core requirement before we can move towards workplace flexibility), like this one from Jimmy On Relationships.

So, overall, we’re probably marginally more flexible, but not close to ‘true’ flexibility yet.

What about how much has changed in ten years?

This is where things start to get interesting, both for myself and on the broader level, so I’ll look at them both separately.

How has the world changed?

I’d say we’re less naive and less concerned about sticking to the rules.

How were we more naive? Well, pre-2016 we’d had 8 years of relatively stable world governance and Trump was only just starting to cause trouble. The idea of a world where the US wanted to invade Greenland, or a global pandemic could wipe out over 7 million people would have been laughable.

Now, we know these things are not only possible, but reality. Pre-covid, I can’t remember a time when the supermarket wasn’t fully stocked – at any moment, I could get whatever I needed – but I honestly can’t remember a time in the last few years where my local Coles has been fully stocked.

We thought that the major disruptors would be robots, and we’d need strong technological skills to keep up – check out this highly entertaining quiz from the World Economic Forum if you’d like a laugh. In 2018, we thought that by now the most in-demand job would be ‘data analyst’, not teacher, and that by 2027 over half of all workers would be freelance, up from 38% (spoiler alert – the number hasn’t shifted, it’s still about 38%).

I also think we were more concerned with following the rules. Skills based hiring wasn’t really a thing (see the Google Trends graph below), we were still thinking about how we could all afford an MBA and worried about degree inflation that might make our qualifications less valuable.

Companies and organisations (at least on the surface) avoided appearing unethical – 2016 was right at the start of the Facebook/Meta Cambridge Analytica data scandal, where personal data was shared for political advertising purposes without consent. I remember being a whole lot less worried back then about my data, or my algorithm (more on that in a minute), because we assumed that people would do the right thing.

Flash forward to 2026, and we now have a social media ban for under 16s, and other controls to protect us from companies who we now know may have a loose relationship with following the rules.

How have I changed?

2016 was quite a while ago, and my world has changed far more than I could have imagined. Back then, I did work part time in career development but it wasn’t my primary focus, and I honestly never thought it would be. I lived in the same house, but my everyday life looked very different as Rob and I had 5 kids between the ages of 4 and 8 at home week on/week off. I got less sleep, less exercise, and drank more wine, but I loved it.

I had vague ideas of what life might look like in 2026, just as I now have a rough idea of what things could look like in 2036, when my children are all well out of education and into their own careers, but I’m not sure if I ever imagined things looking quite like this.

Like the world more broadly, I’d say I’m now less naive, and less concerned about following arbitrary rules. I spend more time researching authors before I pick up their books and start reading, and I check out the background of the podcast hosts I listen to – in other words, I’m less likely to take things at face value.

When I reflect on what matters most, however, things get less murky. I think the core things that make me who I am have stayed pretty much the same – I still like to spend my free time doing the same things, I still respond the same way when I get stressed, and I choose to work about the same amount as I did back then.

If I use these core things to project forward, I can imagine a future where I still prioritise spending time with family, running to keep myself fit-ish (but not too fast), and where I work about the same as I do now. So, while some of the higher level things have changed, much of who I am has stayed the same. If we use this principle and extend the core elements forward, then I think we can get a bit closer with our predictions for the world of work as well.

With that in mind, let’s think about what factors might be important in 12 months time.

My predictions for 2026

Let’s break this into two sections, one for things that I think are going to gain momentum, and another for those that are slowing down.

Rising Trends

Trend 1 – Microcredentials – but only if we see institutional uptake along the entire pipeline, from schools, TAFEs, and universities, through to employers.

This is really more about the shift towards experience and away from qualifications in general – refer back to the trend graph above for skills based hiring – in this context, microcredentials can fill a learning gap and quickly get someone (like a new employee) up to speed on something specific.

I’m not certain about this one though; we’ve been talking about microcreds for ages, and it seems to come and go in waves. Unless everyone gets on the same page in terms of how we evaluate and recognise them, I’m not sure we’ll see this move too much further. An evaluation of the federal government’s Microcredentials Pilot in HE is due out in the middle of this year and I feel that may influence where we go from here.

Personally, I think this is going to take hold even more as we let AI take over some of the technical tasks and move more towards a workforce driven by innovation, critical thinking, social skills, and project management. For example, Monash University has released a super specific microcred for pharmacists that helps them perform a single type of review. They don’t need another degree for this, but they do need a formal qualification which shows they can handle this type of work. Hence, the microcred fits in perfectly.

Trend 2 – Multiple income streams – people will look to protect their income with more than one income stream where they can.

I think this trend is being driven by two things – first, concern about maintaining a regular income in this economic climate, and second, the rise in the number of ways that people can run a gig ‘on the side’.

Concern about the cost of living goes up and down with the markets, but I think it’s fair to say that people no longer want to risk being completely without income unless they have to. A second income stream, even if it’s small, can help insulate us if we ever find ourselves out of our main job, for whatever reason.

Multiple income streams also mean less clunky transitions – you don’t need to entirely leave one job before you can try out something new. This is particularly pertinent if you’re considering starting your own hustle, as you can keep your day job while working on the new project.

And it’s easier than ever to try something else, from gig work like being an Uber driver, through to vibe coding your own app.

Trend 3 – Retention over attraction – companies will focus on keeping good people, where they can.

For the past few years, we’ve seen a pattern where the fastest way to get a pay rise was to change jobs. Companies would offer new hires more than they’d pay existing staff, and loyalty was rewarded with stagnant salaries and vague promises of “we’ll look at it next year.” That’s starting to shift.

We’re seeing more companies invest in actual career development, not just lip service. More internal mobility programmes, more transparent promotion pathways, more willingness to pay existing staff competitive rates rather than waiting for them to get a better offer elsewhere. This isn’t happening everywhere – plenty of organisations are still getting this spectacularly wrong – but the direction of travel is clear.

Part of this is economic. Recruiting is expensive. Training new people is expensive. The disruption of constant turnover is expensive. But part of it is also that we’re moving towards smaller teams of more capable people, rather than large teams where everyone’s expendable. If you’ve got a lean team where everyone actually matters, you can’t afford to lose your good people to a competitor who’s paying 20% more.

We’re also seeing a rise in job hugging, where people stay put in roles for longer in response to a more volatile job market. If you’ve got a decent job with a good team and reasonable conditions, the risk of jumping ship for a marginal increase just isn’t worth it anymore.

This is good news for career development practitioners, because it means organisations might actually start listening when we talk about the importance of meaningful work, development opportunities, and treating people like humans rather than resources. Might. Let’s not get too carried away.

Trends that are slowing down

The ‘dream job’ is no longer a thing – I think this is something we’re already seeing, as people are really moving past this idea that there’s one dream job out there for us that we need to find. Our work is no longer expected to be the only (or even main) part of our lives, which means people are starting to get more comfortable with the idea of not looking for a dream job.

This is an extension of the quiet quitting movement from a few years back, and is also reflected more directly in our space with the move away from talking about ‘following your passion’.

Cover Letters, as we know them, are dying – I have no idea how many cover letters ChatGPT write every day, but I imagine it’s a fair few. Cover letters used to give us a way to show more of ourselves than we could cram into a one page resume, and explain why we want (and are perfect for) the particular job to which we were applying. A cover letter would tell an employer about your communication skills, show that you could follow instructions, and often make up for a less-than-excellent resume.

In our post-AI world, however, employers are less likely to be able to learn all these things because a good number of the applications will have used AI, in which case, the cover letter probably doesn’t indicate much about your communication skills or ability to follow instructions.

The office is no longer the default work location – and hooray for that. Office vacancy rates have been steadily increasing since the pandemic, and show no signs of slowing down, now at their highest rate in 30 years. Companies seem to have largely stopped demanding that employees return to the office 5 days a week, and hybrid arrangements are now normal in a majority of industries and locations.

Companies like Atlassian are leading the way with their Team Anywhere policy, which prioritises online asynchronous communication, and allows employees to work from anywhere that Atlassian has a legal entity. If you want to see more, there’s a great guide here from Hubble which lists some massive companies and shows their work location policy – the vast majority of which allow some flexibility in work location, although not everyone is on board.

This all adds up to a shift from institutional trust to self-advocacy

We know that institutions aren’t going to protect us, and probably don’t have our best interests at heart, so we need to be able to take care of our own careers.

As careers people, I think that this means that we’ll need to be supporting the development of self-advocacy, so that people can do things like decide which microcreds they need, or start their own side hustle with confidence. This will mean avoiding situations where we simply provide the answers and solve problems for people, instead focusing on creating an environment where people feel comfortable asking questions and searching for their own answers.

At the same time, we need to recognise that not everyone is set up in a way which allows them to do this, in which case they may need more support that goes beyond just teaching them skills. Those who are already disadvantaged in the workplace may need help to speak up for themselves, in which case we should be their megaphone, not take it from them.

Supporting self-advocacy may turn out to be the most important thing we can do as careers people in 2026.

What else is new in 2026?

This year with Pondering Careers I want to do some things the same but also change a few things up – specifically, I want to do less pandering to the algorithm.

Towards the end of 2025, I started to get a bit disillusioned with the newsletter and with some of the changes to the LinkedIn algorithm, as well as with social media more generally. This is nothing super new; I’ve been on social media in one form or another since it first emerged (#old) and I’ve seen the platforms change the rules time and time again, but this time feels different somehow. I no longer have the energy to pander to the algorithm, and I’m not the only one – there’s a growing movement of people who feel the same way.

Algorithmic Pandering is a new term to me – I came across it while reading Adam Aleksic‘s very cool book, Algospeak, where he explains how our language is shaped by, and in turn shapes, our activity on social platforms. He frames our behaviour as a need to conform to the rules of the algorithm in order to capture attention, at the expense of creativity and individuality. Influencers, if they want to succeed, need to think carefully about what they talk about – self-censoring from any topics which might trigger the algorithm and cause their videos to be blocked.

For example, he talks about how the algorithm will throttle the performance of some videos for arbitrary reasons – in the screenshot below, you can see that one poor video scored a miserly 596k views, which is less than half the average of his other videos from the same period.

I had to watch the video to work out why it tanked, but then it became clear; in talking about naming conventions for common countries and locations, he says words like ‘Ukraine’ and ‘Congo’, both of which probably triggered some secret law within the algorithm.

There’s no recourse for this, so, to avoid spending time on videos which will underperform, Adam may choose to avoid topics related to geography in the future.

This article from Laura Herman explains how influencers will stifle their own creativity in order to create videos which will appeal to the Tik Tok algorithm, and it’s dire reading because it indicates that we’re all leading towards event horizon.

And this isn’t just happening on social media; academic publishing is another area where self-censorship is both prevalent and disturbing. As the Council of Europe says: “Scholars serve as gatekeepers of knowledge, mediating the transmission of reliable information to the broader public about the natural and social world. When researchers practice self-censorship and refrain from sharing their findings or scientific perspectives, they impoverish both academic and public debates, hinder the free flow of information, and prevent universities and science from fulfilling their role as the “critical conscience” of society. This, in turn, undermines accountability and transparency of societies, and erodes the quality of democratic functioning. If self-censorship becomes widespread and a ‘spiral of silence’ develops, academic freedom may erode even in the absence of formal prohibitions, coercion, or external censorship, resulting in a (self-)oppressive environment.”

Scholars and academics, in order to continue publishing, are forced to select topics and studies which they know have a better chance of being published. Choosing risky or controversial topics, such as ones that challenge the ideas popular with a journal’s editors, could significantly reduce the chances of publication, even though this decision bears no relation to either the quality or the significance of the research.

In other words, we’re not heading in a good direction.

What does this mean for me/us?

I’m exceptionally keen to hear from a diverse range of innovative voices, willing to take risks and share ideas without certainty that they will be well received. To do this, I think we need to go old school and bypass the algorithm.

There’s no algorithm that can impact which emails I receive (yet) so, I’ve been signing up to the email and LinkedIn newsletters of the people I want to hear from. This guarantees that I get to see ALL their content, not just what the algorithm wants to show me.

If you want to do the same for me, you can subscribe to Pondering Careers on LinkedIn (there should be a button for you to subscribe at the top of this page), sign up to receive them via email here, or read the newsletter on the Study Work Grow website here.

This approach won’t fix everything, but it will make sure we don’t get stuck in an echo chamber of our own creation.

What are your predictions for 2026?

I’d love to hear your ideas for what you think the year ahead holds, so if you have any predictions of your own, or thoughts on those I’ve shared here, please send them my way.

Personally, I’m hoping this year will bring lots of time spent with family and lots of new things to learn, alongside some steps forward with the ways we work.