The ‘white-collar’ recession is pummeling office workers, but the end might be near

“I don’t think that the plight of the high-end, mid-level professional is ever going to go away, but we do see green shoots on the horizon,” Korn Ferry’s Mike Distefano, who leads professional search and interim placements at the organizational consulting firm, tells Fortune, adding that “change is afoot on the job market.”

Indeed, people in office jobs have recently gone through some upheaval in the shadow of prosperity during the early pandemic. One in four U.S. workers who lost their jobs last year were white-collar professionals, writes S&P Global, adding that it’s a possible sign the industry “may be straining under the weight of high interest rates and that technological advances may already be making some workers obsolete.” 

And those who are looking for new options report an arduous and frustrating job search. A whopping 40% of applicants say that they didn’t land a single job interview in all of 2024, according to a survey of more than 2,000 respondents by the American Staffing Association and the Harris Poll. Facing a swingback of benefits and relative flexibility, many white-collar workers are left feeling stagnant and disengaged—a phenomenon dubbed the Great Detachment by Gallup.

“Everybody wants to make it to 65 and get the watch and the retirement party, but I think that that has been a fallacy for the past couple generations, and probably will continue to be so as we move forward,” DiStefano says, noting that “we’ve been sort of sitting in this malaise” for up to two years.

Yet it appears as if the pendulum might finally be swinging back in employees’ favor. “Searches from nearly every function and industry have picked up over the past couple months and the pipeline for new business remains encouraging,” says Distefano, slightly facetiously adding that he’s seen more activity in the past 30 days than the past 30 months.

“Do I think people have been waiting patiently to make a move over the past couple of years? Sure,” he muses, adding that many “people feel burned out from doing more with less and not necessarily feeling like they’re getting the financial rewards commensurate with the activity.” He asserts, though, that it’s “all just indicative of where we are in the cycle.” 

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The employees’ revival

At the end of a drought comes the rain. The rise of workers’ leverage appears to be on the horizon, too, though power is currently firmly clamped in the hands of the bosses.

Distefano points to factors fueling potential shift: pent-up demand following a cloud of anxiety regarding an official recession, the slow but sure reduction of interest rates, a high-performing stock market, and a change in administration.

It’s too early to tell how the volatility of President Trump’s administration will impact this all, says Distefano, but from simply a business productivity lens there’s hope of greater federal investment into the economy.

Clocking where we are right now as a buyers’ market, Distefano says that things are a bit up in the air as organizations are scratching their heads regarding the true impact of AI and their future needs.

“Korn Ferry’s recommendation to anybody, regardless of where they are in their career, is you’ve always got to be one step ahead,” he says of the challenging market, adding that the challenge is aligning your skills to where the new jobs and demand might be. That might be harder for white-collar employees already decades into their career, who have been spurned by this era of work. 

While hiring rates remained steady for those who earned less than $55,000 annually, it reached new lows for those who make over $96,000, according to a 2024 report from Vanguard. In 2023, hiring for middle- and top-third-earning employees dwindled so much that the latter group reached the lowest level of hiring since 2014.

“While we don’t believe that there will be a massive upswing in demand for mid-level professional talent in the near future, we do believe there will be a steady stream of turnover and new additions driven by prolonged postponements and pent-up growth initiatives slowly being implemented,” adds Distefano.

In the meantime, he suggests that middle-aged adults in the white-collar workforce stay fresh by networking, always having a contingency plan, and being up to date on their skills. The demand in this current market is for experts, not generalists, he adds.

Even so, “the momentum feels like it’s coming back,” Distefano says of the bleak picture at hand. “I believe we’re brighter days ahead.”