Navigating The White Collar Crack-Up

Jack Lemmon using adding machine in a scene from the film ‘The Apartment’, 1960. As we come to Labor Day 2025, the once-invincible white collar economy is beginning to shatter. (Photo by United Artists/Getty Images)

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“It’s not you, it’s the job market,” I tell white collar job seekers these days. I’ve been a volunteer job coach for four decades. As we come to Labor Day 2025, this is the most competitive job market I’ve seen for white collar job seekers, among all ages and occupations.

Here in California, our once-invincible white collar economy is beginning to shatter. In the past two years, white collar firms have become more risk-averse in hiring and have moved toward a leaner, lower-employment equilibrium. Additionally, the state’s economy is seeing the first employment replacement impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

For job seekers and their families and friends, navigating this white collar crack-up can no longer mean looking to the federal or state government for a new government program, department, or benefit. There is no government program that can bring employment on any scale to today’s white collar job seekers. This employment can only come if the job seekers themselves adopt certain job search strategies. As importantly, it can only come through building employment support networks outside of government.

The White Collar Crack Up

For most of the past half-century, the Labor Day narrative in California has been one of white collar job growth and blue collar job decline: the deindustrialization and loss of heavy manufacturing jobs in the 1980s, the closure of aerospace companies in the 1990s, the housing construction downturn of the Great Recession. In contrast, this Labor Day 2025 finds California’s blue collar economy making a comeback, with job openings and higher wages in construction, manufacturing and direct service jobs.

California’s white collar employment is going in the opposite direction: shedding jobs and workers. The state’s most recent jobs report, through July, finds the main white collar sectors all with net declines in jobs over the year: Professional and Business Services, the largest of the white collar sectors, declined by a net of 46,100 jobs, Financial Services declined by 17,000 jobs, Information by 12,500 jobs.

AI is one factor. A recent report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks job losses, estimates at least 10,000 jobs eliminated nationwide in 2025 so far due to the rapid adoption of AI. In the past month, CEOs of major companies—Ford, Amazon, JP Morgan Chase—have come forward to warn of far greater losses in the next few years: AI reducing a quarter to a half of their white collar workforces.

But AI is only one of several economic forces driving white collar job loss. As set out by Burning Glass Institute president Matt Sigelman and chief economist Gad Levanon in a recent research paper, companies in the white collar sectors greatly over-hired during the pandemic, and post-pandemic found themselves laying off workers. These companies since have become more cautious in adding staff, even though revenues in these sectors have been healthy. At the same time, the number of college graduates seeking white collar jobs has grown, so that more than half of college graduates in California are in jobs that do not require a college degree.

Added to these economic forces are cutbacks in government employment, direct and indirect. The federal government is making widespread cuts in white collar positions, and state and local governments may not be far behind, given their budget deficits. All levels of government are reducing contracts with white collar consulting firms. The result: more and more white collar workers chasing fewer jobs.

How a Job Seeker Navigates This Crack-Up

Policy think tanks are coming forward with proposals for new government programs of retraining, including new government-funded individual training accounts and expanded government funded retraining at community colleges. Yet, there currently exists a sophisticated system of “dislocated worker” retraining and job placement through the state’s publicly funded Local Workforce Development Boards and America Job Centers. Most laid off workers are eligible for retraining, at no cost. Yet few workers take advantage of this benefit. They want and need a job now.

Further, few of the white collar job seekers I see express interest in retraining for blue collar jobs as HVAC technicians, electricians or plumbers. The prejudices against blue collar jobs among college graduates (and their parents) remain strong, and pay levels for white collar jobs remain elevated above blue collar positions.

For the near future at least, the white collar job seeker is best assisted through direction and support in undertaking an effective job search. Such job search today requires the job seeker to be far more proactive than even a few years ago.

Most white collar job seekers immediately turn to the large job boards, such as Indeed or Glassdoor, or to job boards that specialize in sectors, such as health care or information technology. These represent one tool, and are worth submitting applications through. However, by the time jobs hit these boards, they are guaranteed to spur tens if not hundreds of applicants.

The proactivity and creativity required today means reaching out to personal and professional networks: identifying job openings before they appear on job boards, obtaining a recommendation by someone in the firm, gathering detailed information for a job interview. I find job seekers sometimes embarrassed to reach out to their networks. “Don’t be embarrassed,” I say, “we’ve all been there in terms of being laid off or fired.”

Beyond networking, are other proactive routes to employment. Chief among these are contract work and volunteer work, to make contacts, get in the door, build a resume, demonstrate commitment. Being proactive can mean reaching out to a company that may not have a job posting, letting them know of your interest in being part of the company’s team, perhaps carving out a position. It can mean joining with other job seekers in mutual support—sharing ideas, job leads or just encouragement following the inevitable rejections.

None of these actions guarantees finding a job. A job seeker can do everything right, take all of these actions, and still receive rejection after rejection. In fact, that’s the frequent course of events: long months of job search and tens of rejections (sometimes more). Yet, just when a job seems impossible, and when least expected, a placement is achieved. I’ve seen this so many times over the years.

Telling a job seeker they should pursue these proactive measures rarely is sufficient, or even helpful. Most job seekers need support in implementation. This is where the extra-governmental networks come in.

The best thing any family member, friend, religious or civic association colleague can do for a job seeker is to eschew admonition or advice; instead pitch in and provide direct assistance. This means investing time in the job search, reaching out to contacts, connecting the job seeker to the public workforce resources available. In my experience, at the least these contributions will boost the spirits of the job seeker, and spur them on to additional effort. In some cases, these contributions may even lead to a placement.

Assistance in job search is available to job seekers without cost at the America Job Centers throughout the state. However, the case managers and job developers at these Centers usually have caseloads of eighty job seekers or more. They may be a resource, but are no substitute for the role of family, friends and colleagues.

Family, friends and colleagues need to look outside of government, to themselves, to assist job seekers who are close to them–and job seekers, if more distant, who find their way to them.