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Kelly Krasner was always interested in healthcare, but losing both parents to cancer when she was 24 reinforced what she thought would be a lifelong calling. After spending 13 years helping hospitals integrate more cancer screening and diagnosis technologies as a radiology sales and marketing director, Krasner spent six more working at various healthcare technology startups. When her company downsized and she lost her job in 2023, however, Krasner said it felt nearly impossible to get back into the industry. I was applying and applying, and unfortunatelyperhaps because of my age, my status, or people thinking I had to have a high title or a high incomeI just wasn’t getting the roles, she says. I was okay with less money. I wasn’t really interested in the title. I was just interested in making a difference. After nearly a year searching for a role in the industry in which she had spent almost two decades, Krasner, who had juggled small side ventures throughout her career, decided to try something completely different. I had been thinking about [launching a] mowing company for a while. I just never really thought it would be something I would do, says Krasner, who founded SeaWeeds Mow Co. in her coastal community near Wilmington, North Carolina, in early 2024. We offer affordable lawn care, painting, and interior care, and always give back to our community. We adopt sea turtles that have been rescued from injury or illness and help the sea turtle hospital take care of them. Though the new business doesnt pay nearly as much as her previous roles, Krasner says its proven more gratifying in other ways. I really love being outside. I love growing it with my family; the people I’ve met have just been incredible, she says. It’s probably the most rewarding thing I’ve done. Why blue-collar roles are booming A four-year degree and desk job was long considered the most direct path to stable employment with strong career and wage-growth potential. But recent shifts in the U.S. workforce are causing some people, like Krasner, to question whether that remains true. In fact, surveys have found interest in blue-collar work is growing, especially among young Americans, thanks to strong demand for talent and the skyrocketing cost of a four-year degree. As job opportunities, career mobility, and wage-growth opportunities slow among knowledge worker roles, other sectorsespecially those that were hardest hit during the pandemic, like hospitality, food services, and healthcareare experiencing historic staffing shortages, causing many to offer more aggressive salary increases. According to a 2024 report by McKinsey Global Institute, advanced economies like the United States have been facing the tightest labor market in nearly two decades, but historically high staffing shortages have persisted in certain key sectors. It was much more the physical and manual type of work that had shown increases in vacancies, says McKinsey Global Institute Partner Anu Madgavkar, who coauthored the report. Some of the sectors facing the largest staffing gaps, according to Madgavkar, include construction, manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, and hands-on healthcare roles like home health aides. One of the driving forces behind the shortage is Americas aging population, which is increasing the demand for (and reducing the supply of) workers in physically demanding roles. Older people spend a lot more on healthcare services, on housing and utilitiesespecially in the U.S., where a large percentage actually own their homes, and many take on home improvements [in retirement]and they need those physical skills, Madgavkar says. On the supply side of the story, you have fewer younger able-bodied people, and younger people also have higher rates of college enrollment, as more aspire to be in white-collar jobs than their parents. The white-collar recession The growing demand for workers in physically intensive professions has coincided with a recent stagnation in job opportunities in the knowledge economy. Economic uncertainty, AI fears, and a deterioration in the pay premium that previously came with switching jobs has inspired more Americans to hang onto their jobs for longer, especially in knowledge economy roles, in what is sometimes referred to as the Big Stay. Analyst and author Josh Bersin instead labels it a white-collar recession. Most of the white-collar workers I talk to are sticking with their jobs because they’re afraid of leaving, he says. And then when I talk to employers, there’s this massive, almost unanimous trend towards finding AI tools that can reduce the number of people they need to hire. Bersin points to numerous studies that show that job growth opportunities for those with a four-year degree are stalling, while IT spendingespecially on generative AI toolsis increasing. I think a lot of the slowdown in hiring is just budget shifting towards automation, he says. Not necessarily replacing every job . . . but instead of hiring three more people, we should hire two more people, or one more personand invest in this new tool. Whether the technology is truly capable of replacing knowledge workers at this early stage is still up for debate, but Bersin says vendors are advertising their AI solutions as productivity enhancements, inspiring some employers to adjust their payroll budgets accordingly. In contrast, he says, you look at nurses, you look at truck drivers, you look at blue-collar workers, you look at restaurant workers, you look at hospitality workerstheres not enough of them, he says. While technology is still displacing workers in manufacturing, construction, and other labor-intensive industries, Bersin says technology-driven workforce reductions in those sectors likely peaked years ago. That hasn’t happened in white-collar work yet, so we’re in the painful stage of companies figuring out what this is going to look like, and that hurts when you’re the one in the job that they don’t need anymore, he adds. We’ve sort of flipped the narrative in the job market; the people that are the most nervous are the people that are more educated and more administrative in their roles, and the operational peoplethe hands-on jobs, the more hourly workare the ones that are [in demand]. Does it really pay toswitch collars? While increases to hourly earnings for more educated workers have remained relatively flat since the pandemic, those in more manual roles have experienced historic growth, according to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute. Thats especially true among workers at the lowest end of the wage spectrum, Black workers and less educated workers. According to the study, hourly wages for the bottom 10% of earners grew 15.3% between 2019 and 2024, after that same cohort saw their wages shrink by 2.1% in the five years between 2007 and 2012. By comparison, workers at the highest end of the salary spectrum saw a more modest 6.8% pay bump between 2019 and 2024, while those in 50th to 80th percentiles saw their earnings grow less than 5%, once adjusted for inflation. Wage growth for workers with lower levels of educational attainment has actually been much faster over the most recent period than it has for much of the prior 40 years, says Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould, who coauthored the report. The wage growth for somebody with a bachelor’s degree or more, that’s been pretty consistently solid for a long time. Its just most recently been eclipsed. While wages are rising faster among less educated workers, Gould emphasizes that there is still a significant pay gap between those with and without a four-year degree. Those without the credential earn an average of roughly $20 per hour, while those with a bachelors degree or higher average $37 per hour. Since 2019, both groups have seen average hourly wages increase by roughly an inflation-adjusted $1 per hour; however, that dollar represents a much more significant percentage increase for those earning less. That slower wage growth [among higher earners] could have also been because there were some other benefits white-collar workers were able to negotiate in lieu of faster wage growth, like working from home, Gould says. Not just a paycheck Workers with less educational attainment and in more manual roles may be experiencing greater demand, more career stability, and faster wage growth, but the data suggests knowledge workers are still commanding significantly higher salaries. At the same time, career instability, AI anxiety, and relatively stagnant wages have made knowledge work more precarious than it has been in generations, leading somelike Krasnerto seek more stable and potentially fulfilling opportunities doing more manual work. It’s not as much of a fight for my life against AI out there in the field, she says. While it can mow lawns, believe it or not, its not something Im afraid to lose my job to at this point. Though her career pivot has required some lifestyle adjustments, Krasner says the transition has also inspired a different outlook on work and the role it plays in her life. Once you get back to being human again and feeling the sunshine and the fresh air and being tired at night from doing something that actually matters, it really does change your perspective, she says. Its not easythis [is] a major financial change for me . . . but when I am done at the end of the day, I’ve never been happier.
Category:
E-Commerce
In my work, I frequently observe teams whose purpose is to provide top-level service fall into frustration with their inability to deliver. With stress coming from a lack of support from their workplaces practices, communication, or training, I can empathize. Studies find that workplace burnout is at unprecedented levels, and with layoffs forcing workers to handle multiple roles, emotionally exhausted teams deserve support to carry on. With frustrated customers being redirected to apps, endless hold times, or inadequate self-service forums that can’t address complex problems, we need solid teams to help us with our customer-facing problems. When trapped in bureaucratic dysfunction, even high-performing teams feel defeated by their inability to create solutions. Despite advanced technologies, research shows employees spend significant time frustrated by organizational processes and policies that block their progress. And when customers experience these stall-outs, it translates to sinking loyalty and profits. Why Workplace Productivity Is Falling In fact, a recent study from Gallup found the average knowledge worker spends nearly 10 hours each week navigating internal processes and bureaucracy, which translates to 25% of their total workweek. Referred to as the productivity tax, these findings revealed that 77% of employees report differing levels of frustration with organizational barriers; only 23% feel organizational procedures support employee productivity. It’s not just employees that are discouraged. Larger enterprises lose up to $15 million annually per 1,000 employees due to process inefficiencies and bureaucratic friction. Thats not to mention the emotional tolls employees sufferlike spikes in anxiety and cortisol levelsfrom handling angry customers. The result: sagging motivation to keep trying to make progress, often culminating in a sense of defeat by the very systems that are supposed to help employees complete their work. How can teams exhausted from these experiences stay agile to spark the needed innovative work-arounds that will solve customer and morale problems quickly? Three proven strategies can give teams the needed momentum to not give up. A Stressed Team on the Frustration Threshold At her bank, Sara’s team struggled with routine foreign account payments for premium clients. The process required verbal approval from the account holder plus two digital approvals, making it cumbersome for busy executives who often confirmed without reviewing transactions. Multimillion-dollar transfers disappeared for days. Some accounts experienced bounce-backs weeks later due to system errors, one banking team member said. Yet Saras team always cited the same reasons as the source of their stall-outs: The Dodd-Frank Act requirements for international transfers leave us no options to do better. For years, multistep confirmations have been used by banks, exacerbating banking clients frustrations. Already wasting thousands of dollars in lost time, the team asked a key question: Why is transferring the same amount, to the same account, on the same day each month so complicated? Interrupting the Team Frustration Pattern The breakthrough came not from accepting established limitations, but from three key elements working in concert. 1. Identifying the right people. The team-based resolution accelerated three essential perspectives from a small team of the right people close to the problem: A customer with a problem, perplexed by a seemingly simple task, asking the question, Isnt there a better way by now? An operations specialist with deep systems knowledge A customer service representative willing to dig deeper into the maze of systems to check assumptions and ask, Whats missing in order to do this? All parties unwilling to accept the answer, Sorry, that’s just how it works.” This combination provided the authority, expertise, and motivation needed to pursue nonstandard solutions. 2. Safely asking the same question differently (and repeatedly). Returning to one fundamental question, and reframing it in a psychologically safe way, the solution came from a practice referred to as shifting frames, coupled with not accepting explanations about regulations and international banking protocols. “There must be a better way. What are we missing?” This refusal to normalize inefficiency eventually cracked the case. After hearing the same question framed slightly differently multiple times, the customer service representative looped in an operations specialist who recognized, “Waitis this account a certain type? Because if so . . .” The aha moment came not from new information, but from seeing existing information through a different lensprecisely because they refused to stop questioning. 3. Problem-solving collaboratively with a shared goal. What made this experience remarkable wasn’t that one person found the solution. Rather, it was how three peoplefrustrated but committed to finding an answerworked together with increasing focus. The answer that the customer had received for nearly six months from other banking team members transformed into “How can we make this work?”reframed from explaining why it wouldn’t. The Breakthrough Formula The resolution revealed a repeatable formula for breaking through frustrating problems: Persistence + Right People + Questioning Assumptions = Breakthrough Solutions. This approach works because it addresses the three common failure points in problem-solving: Giving up too soon. Most teams stop at the first or second “no,” never reaching the insight that comes after sustained effort. Involving the wrong people. Problems often stall because the people with the expertise, authority, or motivation to solve them aren’t in the conversation. Accepting false constraints. Teams frequently operate within imagined limitations, never questioning whether the rules that appear to block progress actually apply to their specific situation. So how can you apply these principles to your own seemingly intractable problems? Create psychological safety around persistent questioning. Te most valuable question wasn’t the first or second asking about alternativesit was the fifth. Eliminate fear by creating an environment in which people feel comfortable asking the same fundamental questions repeatedly, knowing that breakthrough insights often emerge from persistent inquiry. Bring multiple expertise levels to stubborn problems. While the banking example is a simple one, its also one many can relate to. The long-standing issue wasnt solved by a single technical specialist, frontline employee, or customer pressure. It required the combination of all three perspectives. Focus on the desired outcome, not the process. Throughout the teams interactions, focus was maintained on the end goal (completing the transaction) rather than debating the merits of existing processes, Sara explained. This orientation prevented the team from getting lost in explaining why things weren’t working and kept them searching for how they could find a solution. The Payoff of Productive Persistence The difference between problems that linger forever and those that get solved quickly often comes down to how teams approach the frustration threshold. Average teams give up when initial solutions fail. Exceptional teams recognize that the moment of greatest frustration often precedes the breakthrough. By assembling the right people, maintaining persistent questioning, and collaborating with a solution focus, even the most frustrating bureaucratic tangles can unravelrevealing pathways that were available all along, just waiting for the right combination of perspectives to discover them. This isn’t just about banking transactions or customer service. It’s a fundamental approach to organizational effectiveness that transforms frustration from a signal to give up into a signal to dig deeper, ask better questions, and find the people who can help you see the problem differently. In 2025 and beyond, the competitive advantage belongs not to organizations with perfect processes, but to those with teams who excel at breaking through barriers when those processes inevitably fail.
Category:
E-Commerce
Fast Company explores the complicated truth about the effect social media has on this generation’s teen population.
Category:
E-Commerce
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