Five Reasons To Be Optimistic About Work in 2025
From Pyjama Power to Solo AI Empires: Ideas for Earning, Learning, and Thriving
Happy New Year!
As we step into 2025, the world of work offers a wealth of exciting opportunities and positive shifts.
From global hiring trends to kitchen-table entrepreneurs, here's why there's reason for optimism in the year ahead.
Global Hiring Outlook: Growth Signals for 2025
The Net Employment Outlook (NEO) is a widely used measure for assessing future job prospects and hiring trends. It’s a forward-looking metric that provides hiring intentions of employers over the next quarter. It’s the difference between the percentage of employers planning to increase their workforce and those intending to decrease it. It’s based on interviews with over 40,000 employers across 42 countries.
The global Net Employment Outlook (NEO) stands at +25%, signaling that more employers plan to expand staffing in early 2025 than reduce it. This positive outlook suggests businesses are optimistic about growth, which can lead to more job opportunities worldwide.
The strongest hiring outlook comes from:
India +40%, U.S. +32%, UK +28%, Asia Pacific +27%, Europe/EMEA +19%, Sweden +17%
Industries with strong hiring intentions include:
IT +37%, Financial Services +33%, and Healthcare +28%.
We can use the NEO to ‘feel’ the pulse of global hiring intentions, helping us navigate the landscape of work in 2025.
I know you’re out there…I can feel you now. Neo, The Matrix
While it’s not quite a ‘truth-revealing tool,’ it offers valuable insights into employer optimism and labour market shifts. That said, it reflects intentions rather than outcomes and excludes informal jobs, which are becoming an increasingly significant source of work.
As we turn from hiring intentions to another key economic indicator, there’s more reason to approach 2025 with cautious optimism.
The Misery Index is Low
The good news is that the Misery Index is historically fairly low.
The Misery Index sounds like a song by The Smiths, but it is in fact
an economic measure designed to gauge discomfort at a national level.
The Misery Index = Inflation + Unemployment
This simple formula combines the inflation rate (the rising cost of living, such as paying more for food, which makes us miserable) with the unemployment rate (not having an income also makes us miserable). The concept was introduced by economist Arthur Okun in the 1960s.
At about 7, the Misery Index in the U.S. today is relatively low compared to its historical highs, such as the 1980s, when it soared over 20 during a period of stagflation (high unemployment and high inflation). There is a similar value for the Misery Index for the UK, where inflation has eased, and unemployment is hovering at 4.3%.
However, before we crack open the supermarket cava, we must acknowledge that the Misery Index is a crude measure.
For example:
Unemployment might be historically low—about 4% in the U.S. but this doesn’t capture the millions who are economically inactive because they are too sick to work. In the UK alone, 2.6 million people are economically inactive due to long-term illness, a record high.
Having a job doesn’t eliminate poverty. In the UK, 17% of individuals in poverty come from households where all adults are working. This means even families with steady employment can struggle to pay for essentials like housing, energy, and food.
So, while the Misery Index gives us a reason to be cautiously optimistic about the economic outlook, it misses the bigger picture. The real challenge is to create not just jobs, but societies that provide economic security and opportunity for all.
Money can’t buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
Spike Milligan
Workforce indicators are one measure, but what about workplace flexibility and comfort…
The Pyjamification of Work
You might be reading this article sitting at your kitchen table wearing your pyjamas.
Remote work has surged since pre-COVID times, with U.S. remote workdays growing nearly fourfold (from 6.5% to 25%) and the UK seeing an eightfold increase.
The top 4 benefits of working from home according to research from Professor Nick Bloom are
No commute
Save on travel and lunch costs
Flexibility over where I work
Less time getting ready for work
The last two benefits clearly illustrate the Pyjamification of Work.
Flexibility to choose where to work:
At the office - deciding what to wear, getting dressed, make-up, driving in a traffic-jam, getting on the metro, buying a $10 coffee, and entering the office with a faux smile.
At home - we can respond to emails, code, edit, research wearing our pyjamas with our hair not brushed, and the face we woke up with.
It’s worth mentioning that not everyone can work from home in their pyjamas.
In the United States, around 75% of workdays are on-site; in the UK, about 60% of workers are primarily on-site, and in Sweden, at least 75% work mostly on-site.
And wearing your pyjamas whilst working in the hospital or driving truck is still not socially acceptable.
Further reading - you can read Professor Bloom’s latest report ‘The Future of WFH’ - 32 page PDF presentation
From having a boss who impacts what you wear at work to new earning opportunities without a boss…
More Ways to Earn
AI and digital tools are unlocking unprecedented opportunities for individuals to thrive outside traditional employment models, creating a new era of empowered solo entrepreneurs.
Back in 2020, I wrote Unleashing the Decentralised Workforce (still the most popular article here), in which I described how an untapped workforce could leverage digital infrastructure to achieve its economic potential outside of traditional employment.
I highlighted examples of livestreamers, playbourers, hourly experts, and slashies.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, made an intriguing prediction that one day a single-person company will be worth a billion dollars thanks to AI technologies.
Instagram famously had 13 employees when it sold to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012.
A billion might be out of reach for most people, but what about a single-person company being worth a million dollars?
We gave some characteristics of one-person million dollar businesses in our 5 Big Questions for Work in 2025
…build the audience first, then test and develop…
Another category in my article was Digital Shopkeepers, where I mentioned Shopify, who enable people to run their own shops online and offline. Back in 2020 they had 1 million shopkeepers, now they have 5.6 million, with over $7 Billion revenue.
Some ideas for million-dollar businesses:
Create an online course - Jack Butcher’s course Visualize Value generates more than a million a year.
Start an AI-powered business - to cut spending, scale processes and increase margins. Examples include, SaaS platforms, personal assistant services, AI agencies, content marketing.
Start a YouTube Channel - Nastya earned $28m last year from 124m subscribers - she is 10 years old.
Reach $1 million with subscription revenue like Lenny’s Newsletter
Here are more million-dollar business ideas from Shopify.
More Ways to Learn
When you are likely to be working for another 50 or 60 years, taking a 4-year degree in the city you were born in when you are 18 makes less sense.
Nobody can really predict what type of education and skills will be useful as life will change radically in a decade, let alone a lifetime.
The rise of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and free online resources makes continuous learning more accessible than ever, helping individuals stay ahead in a rapidly changing world.
Here are 1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities such as Stanford, MIT and Oxford. Top up your knowledge with courses, and lectures on:
How to Speak by Patrick Winston (AI pioneer) from MIT
People Analytics from the University of Pennsylvania
I have used ChatGPT to help practice my Portuguese, devising lesson plans and conjugating most common verbs. This language teacher gives some more practical examples in a video to learn any language using ChatGPT, and I also found this article had some useful tips too.
And YouTube (for me - recipes and ‘how to fix something’) Khan Academy, and freeCodeCamp are well known sources of learning.
I don't know the future...I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end, I came here to tell you how this is going to begin. Neo, The Matrix
Whether you're coding in your pajamas, building a solo enterprise, or continuously learning new skills, the possibilities have never been more diverse.
For those in the workforce the key metrics we've explored - from the NEO to the Misery Index are fairly positive.
With the rise of remote work, AI-powered learning, and digital entrepreneurship, more people can participate in the future of work, regardless of their location or background.
The best opportunities often lie at the intersection of these trends.
Can you combine remote work flexibility with continuous learning?
Could your expertise become a million-dollar solo venture?
With the tools, platforms, and opportunities at your fingertips, 2025 offers the perfect time to take control of your work story.
How will you make this year your most impactful yet?
Starting the year positively,
Andy
Thanks Andy, I really appreciate your consideration of the people whose experience is not represented by the aggregate %.
Fantastic post Andy! Happy 2025.