The White-Collar Unravelling

Welcome to Monday Mornings! A publication about the new world of work beyond the 9-5 — exploring the rise of mass entrepreneurialism. Through sharp analysis and interviews with the builders, thinkers, and leaders driving this shift, Monday Mornings unpacks what a post 9-5 world means for individuals, businesses, and society.

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_{P.S. We paused for three weeks to rejig the schedule around the Easter period — now back to our usual rhythm. Glad you missed us.}

Happy Monday, folks!

If you’ve felt like white-collar jobs are having a bit of a crisis lately, well, you wouldn’t be wrong.

As ever, this edition of Monday Mornings is here to help you make sense of what’s happening.

This April Briefing includes

• The White-Collar Unravelling: In a nutshell

• The distance between UK graduates and minimum wage workers is shrinking

• An open letter to experienced professionals facing career demise

• Why job seekers are right to be concerned: the job market is frozen

At its core, we’re asking: can the once-stable professional career ladder be trusted?

White-collar work refers to a type of office work that often requires a higher education. Simplistically it’s been referred to as the ‘sitting down jobs’ in contrast to its counterpart blue-collar work, the ‘standing up jobs’.

Experts have been warning us of a permanent shift and job loss across white-collar work, especially at the entry-level. Government reports have even underestimated job losses by hundreds of thousands.

Unlike a traditional recession, this is a White-Collar Recession.

As with any macro shift the rationale is complex, but broadly speaking can be attributed to:

• Cautious economic conditions — Rising interest rates, market instability and shifting trade policies have made employers more risk-averse

• Companies are slimming down —Years of over-hiring, especially during the pandemic, are being corrected through layoffs, hiring freezes, flatter org charts and efficiency drivers, hitting middle management layers hardest

• Technology has outpaced talent — Generative AI is increasingly able to perform cognitive tasks, commoditising once-specialised knowledge

• Jobs are changing faster than education — The gap between where education leaves graduates and where employers pick up has become too wide for many employers who see hiring Gen Z as risky

When you throw the recent tariffs into the mix, these factors have created the conditions of a workforce crisis that ‘no one’s ready for’.

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Get informed: The deal with White Collar work

1/  The death of the middle-class professional spells danger for Labour
(Source: Guardian, January 2025)

Guardian columnist, Gaby Hinsliff pulls on research from the independent think-tank Resolution Foundation, to announce that graduate salaries have fallen in the last twenty years.

The boundaries between white-collar and blue-collar work and their associated earnings are now blurrier than ever. Where a graduate historically earned 2.5 times the minimum wage, today it is closer to 1.6 times. A big contrast to a previous world in which having a middle-class white-collar job could almost guarantee access to home ownership, sense of safety, and of comfort.

Yet the gap between these two classes shrinking has not equated to fairer opportunities for all. Rather, it shows how the precariousness that was once only experienced by minimum wage earners, has crept up the income scale.

Politically, this could well have ramifications, Hinsliff posits that Gen Z voting patterns (worldwide) have been demonstrating a backlash against mainstream parties in favour of more radical ones for a while.

The UK’s Labour party, should take note of this very large number of graduates, “who faithfully did everything they were told would help them get on in life…. only to realise that they may never be rewarded in the way they were promised.” I know many millennials who can relate to this one!

2/ The White Collar Recession is Real: What should we do about it?
(Source: Josh Bershin Company, March, 2025)

Workers with advanced degrees are becoming the “dislocated workforce” of the future, according to Josh Bershin, who runs a global HR research and advisory company.

Over the last six months, jobs that require advanced degrees are growing the most slowly, whilst demand for more ‘blue-collar’ roles such as in food service, healthcare, retail and manufacturing workers are growing three times as fast.

He writes to his readers, many of whom in their mid-late careers that they all “face the same frightening fate which manufacturing workers felt in the 1970s and 1980s… we have to learn to adapt”. This pressure on professional jobs is not going away any time soon, and AI is just one of many reasons behind this squeeze.

His solution? Every decade white-collar professionals should have the humility to reinvent themselves. Years of experience are no longer the currency du jour as we now live in a world of career reinvention where you ‘may have to be a bit of an apprentice again’.

Bershin promises the reader that, it’s time to strap in, but new, positive, opportunities do await them.

2/ The Job Market is Frozen
(Source: The Atlantic, Feb 2025)

Staff writer at The Atlantic, Rogé Karma covers economic policy and was encouraged to dive into the data on the job-market after his younger brother’s job hunt proved unsuccessful despite his top private university degree.

Karma shares being ‘baffled’ by the fact that unemployment rates are a 50-year low but for many, finding a job has felt like “screaming into the void with each application I am filling out” in the words of a frustrated job-seeker.

The reason is two-fold: hiring has slowed to levels of the Great Recession (when unemployment was nearly twice as high) and percentage of workers who are voluntarily quitting is almost at a ten-year low. In other words, the job market is frozen.

Worst hit are white-collar professionals in the ‘professional and business services’ sectors and young graduates are struggling much more than any headline economic stats are telling us.

When the job market is frozen, though, it impacts the entire economy - not just job seekers - because it stalls productivity, innovation, and social mobility.

Trailblazers

• Authority Club — Founded by me, Ellen Donnelly, highly relevant for today’s topic(!). Authority Club is where professionals become go-to self-employed experts, generate consistent client demand and pay themselves generously.

•  Layoffs.fyi — Founded by Roger Lee whose team gathers transparent data about rising lay off numbers and tracks every single tech company layoff and now DOGE layoff he can find, sourcing from credible reporting and press.

• Employ America — A think tank promoting better labour outcomes for America, Employ America encourage monetary and fiscal policies that boost employment, wages and job quality.

A Final Word (from me)

I’ve worked at the intersection of careers and technology for over a decade and the stakes feel particularly high right now.

If you’ve been following along closely you’ll know I am bullish that the future of work is shifting toward mass entrepreneurship. Not out of self-interest (yes, I’m a business coach), but because the data is pointing that way.

My theory? This white-collar unravelling leaves professionals with a limited set of options: shift into blue-collar work, become unemployed, or start a business or portfolio of income streams. We could be heading toward a future where the entire concept of employment needs rethinking.

Although the majority of people I coach have chosen entrepreneurship proactively, some have found themselves reactively setting up a sole proprietorship after an unexpected layoff. Either way, they are clutching at the wheel to try and regain control over their career.

I write these (sometimes scary) updates with love. I don’t particularly like what I see, but do believe we need to be having these conversations. Monday Mornings entire focus is to provide you a one-stop place to understand why this shift is happening, and, what its implications are on workers, society and businesses.

To be clear: I don’t believe everyone should work for themselves. My hope however, is that if these patterns continue, that we’ll soon see better protections, insurance, and infrastructure for the self-employed.

I’m doing my part and I want to know how these shifts are affecting you. Let’s keep the conversation going.

And, in other news this month….

👍Monday Marvels

Purpose-driven, people-first organisations do exist. Escape The City platform have announced their top 1% Employer Certification recognising the employers who have matched the criteria, to the highest standard with a title that is more than just an accolade.

👎 Monday Moanings

White House’s trade policy is threatening jobs and security. Analysts are calling a 60% likelihood of recession and many CEOs are describing their impact as having “war-rooming” consequences.

I’ll be back in two weeks, interviewing a future of work thinker who has spent a decade understanding white-collar working shifts.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s topic. What else do you think should be considered? Share your opinions in the comments!

Monday Mornings is written and hosted by Ellen Donnelly, a writer, speaker, and coach focused on the future of work. She specialises in the shift towards mass entrepreneurialism, and supports founders navigating pivots in her private coaching practice, The Ask.