Making sense of the middling career

Plus: The K-shaped economy is back

Hi friends,

While it always feels strange to write about me, me, me when many bad things are happening in the world, my sense is there are others out there who may relate to the essay below.

In today’s issue:
1. Making sense of the middling career
2. The K-shaped economy is back
3. Links

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Making sense of the middling career

The original title for this essay was “making sense of the weird career middle,” to highlight how difficult careers can be when you’re past entry-level but aren’t yet senior. Working is hard at any age, and it looks exceedingly tough for entry-level employees right now. But when you’re somewhere in the middle, you’re grappling with uncertainty and regret, while also having your future options limited by what you’ve done in the past. I have less desire, and possibly ability, to be as agile as I was; while I would have jumped at any new opportunity just starting out, now I’d like a little certainty to go along with my growth. With refrains of “Is that all there is?” reverberating, I think we all go a little mad mid-career.

The current title, courtesy of my good friend Trey, is a play on the original but also gets at deeper feelings that I harbor about my career a decade in. I have written some stories and honed skills that young me would be proud of; I have also written plenty that’s just so-so and continuously put work I really want to do on the back burner, for any number of reasons. Had I charted a different path, I might have different skills to offer, but it feels too late to reroute now. And in an industry like media, it’s hard not to compare yourself to the extremely well-publicized and compensated “stars,” which I certainly am not. It’s also hard not to think that if I were one of these Media Darlings, I’d still be employed. So middling feels about right.

I’m far from the first 30-something to take stock of her career and place in the world and be left wanting. My then-editor Lindsey commented it was a normal part of life when I wrote about my evolving ambition back in 2023, one of those stories I’m most proud of and the subject of which, clearly, I’m still working through. Two-and-a-half years later, I keep thinking about that piece and what has and hasn’t changed since then:

If you follow a traditional career path, your 20s are when you can climb the ladder really quickly, says Kara Cutruzzula, a journalist, playwright, and author of a daily newsletter on work, life, and creativity. This is true for me: Since I’ve graduated college, I’ve gotten a new job every few years, always a step up from my previous role. Reaching the next rung on the ladder for the sake of it was never my goal, but it was satisfying in its own way. It was tangible proof that I was doing something right.

As the years go by, though, there’s a lot more space between the rungs than there used to be. Most people reach a point in their careers where there’s simply too much space to make the next step, and instead they opt for lateral moves—or they look back and realize that they’ve been on the wrong ladder the whole time.

But the media rite of passage of Losing Your Job has been added to the mix, and I feel even more untethered in a world currently defined by political, economic, and environmental uncertainty. It was easy to put off thinking about the future when I had something to do everyday. Now, it’s unknowns all the way down.

The well-meaning sentiment I’ve heard over and over in the past few weeks is, “Losing your job is actually a blessing—now you have time to figure out what you want to do next!” That could be true. At the same time, it’s hard not to feel nihilistic about the state of legacy media and traditional journalism, to feel that many doors have been closed and will never be reopened in what was already an extremely difficult career to gain entry to, one I loved. Even if I do discover a career I’d rather have, I’ll be mourning that one, as are many other journalists who have been forced out of the profession over the past few years. I do feel rushes of excitement when I think about what I can do on my own…and then I remember how much health insurance costs.

And this time isn’t easy for anyone, regardless of where you are in your career. All I can do is lean on the skills I do have and try to learn new ones. For the original story on ambition, I had a great talk with Satya Doyle Byock, a psychotherapist in Portland, Ore., and author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (she also has a Substack). I’m well past quarterlife, but what we talked about still resonates:

“I think in capitalism, there’s a notion that once you’re on the up and up, you should just keep climbing,” Byock says. “But the reality of being a human being is life is always going to have ups and downs, and we are healthiest when we can stay attuned to those ups and downs.”

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Byock recommends engaging with the “seemingly irrational curiosities” I may have—whether that’s interest in a certain topic or an artist I admire.

“Right now, who are the people who most interest you and excite you?” she asks me. “That very well may be your soul telling you this is a new north star.”

My plan for now is to let my soul direct me, and yes, I have the time to do it. Of course, my routine 30-something existential crisis is also being timed with an apparent remaking of the global economy and the advent of AI. Even if you don’t believe the latter can do all of what the people selling it say it can, other people are losing their jobs because of it, or so we’re told. It’s easy to say these unfortunate workers just need to pivot and figure out something new, but when companies across sectors and industries are citing the technology as a reason to trim their workforces, it’s hard to think through what a comfortable, AI-proof career could look like. It seems unlikely my soul will be able to dictate the terms.

To try to put a tidy bow on all of this: The middle of a career has always seemed to me to be a difficult space to be in, as you reflect on the work you have done and try to figure out what could be next in the many years ahead of you. Now I’m in the thick of things, and I don’t know where to shift to or even if I want to, made all the more difficult by the desire for a modicum of certainty in my older age as entire career paths are being eliminated. As always, there are no easy answers.

A few more stories from my 2023 “ambition” series:

• Americans are in the era of quiet ambition: No longer ‘chasing achievement for achievements’ sake’

• How to embrace ‘wintering’ when your ambition is tapped (shoutout Katherine May)

• ‘I was burned out to the core.’ How 3 women took career breaks to reset their priorities

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The K-shaped economy is back

The whole story is worth reading but one line in particular sticks out to me in a recent piece from the Washington Post’s Heather Long: “The ‘K-shaped’ economy is back, where there’s a clear divergence between how the top and the bottom are faring.”

The term “K-shaped economy” first came into my vocabulary during the Covid-19 pandemic, when far more lower-earning workers lost their jobs (think service and retail) than those with better-paying office jobs who could work from home. There’s a lot more nuance there, but the letter K was used to represent how the rich saw their wealth explode (roaring stock market, soaring home values, uninterrupted high-paying employment) while the less fortunate saw their finances deteriorate. The rich are represented by the upper leg of the K, stretching ever skyward; the less wealthy by the lower leg, reaching down as inflation and debt compound. I covered this extensively at CNBC, and if you care about inequality and a functioning economy, it’s not a great trend.

The K-shaped economy is even more aggressive now, because we’re building on Covid-era inequality. We’re at, like, Super K levels now. A distinct example of this: Millennials—or anyone, but that’s the prime age group—who were able to buy homes in the halcyon days of late 2020 and 2021 when interest rates were historically low are likely to face completely different economic realities than those who could not, generally speaking.

As Long explains, a K-shaped economy has enormous and varied consequences, including that more and more companies are reliant on an ever-shrinking portion of high earners to buy their products and services, because no one else has any extra money to spend. That’s why so many are going all in on “premium” and “luxury” offerings. That’s also why many (most?) mainstream media outlets try to cater their coverage to higher-income readers. It’s not a super great thing for a consumer economy.

“In the near term, everything rests on what that top 10% decides to do or not to do,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, told her. “The rest of the income distribution is really not consequential from a macroeconomic perspective.” Notably, Zandi is also warning that we are on the “precipice of recession.”

This feels even worse when you consider, as in Sunday’s Money Moves, that everything is getting more expensive, which further hurts lower earners relative to higher earners. At the same time, I don’t think white collar workers will be spared from a downturn in the economy, and many companies have been very clear they want to cut their workforces further using AI. Rather, the lower leg of the K will come to symbolize more and more people.

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Links

• I asked in Sunday’s Money Moves about how folks are using AI in their personal and professional lives, and the New York Times delivered a look at the work side of it. I’m a little freaked out by doctors recording conversations using AI to transcribe? Are the patients aware? Where does the data go?

• Musician JP Saxe writes about cancelling his tour and music industry spin: “That’s the game. If the ship is sinking, you announce you’ve decided to be a submarine.”

• “President Trump is imitating Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into economy.”

• A very good story about a trend I’ve been thinking a lot about recently: The end of the mega-employer.

• Somebody Somewhere is just one of the loveliest shows, and I’m very happy for star Jeff Hiller’s “late in life” (aka post-40) success.

• I finally had the time to go to this used bookstore on the UES with limited hours of operation. Buy 4 books, get 1 free? Don’t mind if I do!

• The clowns* were right: A new Taylor Swift album is coming, which long-time Money Movers will know is a big deal.

• Been listening to this song on repeat the past few weeks.

That’s it for now. Talk soon,
A

*This is what Swifties refer to themselves as when they are theorizing about new music.

P.S. Thanks Christopher Skinner for the illustrations!
P.S.S. To share tips, pitch ideas, or provide reader feedback, please respond to this newsletter or email aliciaadamczyk781@gmail.com.