Stop searching for job security

You can create something better yourself

“Which careers have the highest job security?” If you have ever asked yourself this question, you may have fallen into a trap.

As early as grade school, I was getting advice about what to do about my long-term career, which all boiled down to the same message: “You need to find a good-paying job that is stable and secure.”

This didn’t sound strange to my teenage self, especially coming from parents who walked the walk and had different versions of the same type of job their whole careers. It wasn’t until my 30s that I realized something was wrong:

• People get fired or laid off all the time
• Changing jobs is totally normal, and often beneficial
• Planning for retirement requires you to avoid spending money for decades until you are too old to enjoy it
• Getting sick can eat all of your savings even if you did everything right
• The economy is this wacky thing that doesn’t do what anyone thinks it’s going to do

Most of this is not even controversial, people just accept it as a reality. But within that reality, seeking a “secure” job feels like a sick joke that people take literally and unironically. I found myself in one of those situations where either I was crazy or the system was.

Psst… It’s the system

I’ll let the jury decide on my state of mind, but in the meantime allow me to convince you the system is nonsense.

For decades, job security has been defined as a CHARACTERISTIC of a specific job, industry, or market. This is a dangerous way of thinking. Yes, you read that right. Job security as it’s usually defined is a harmful concept. Not just that, it’s elusive: a Gallup poll in 2022 found that more than half of US workers are looking for more security than they have now, a finding that hasn’t changed since 2015. Things are not getting better.

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The idea of job security has been discussed in print at least as early as 1940 (The Great Depression probably played some part in getting people to talk about it), and from what I can tell it has always been misleading. Here’s what we are told job security means:

A job with “security” promises that you will always have your job or a similar one until you retire (as long as you don’t break laws or go full Kanye on social media).

Just for giggles, let’s entertain the thought. How are you supposed to find a job that has “security?”

You are given 3 “job security doors” to choose from:

• Find an in-demand job: Some industries say that their job is so valuable and skilled individuals are in such demand that you will always have a job if you want it. Nurses hear this a lot.
• Find a special “job security guarantee”: Some institutions promise that if you reach a certain level and show you’re good enough, your job is safe no matter what. Academic tenure is a classic example.
• Find an organization that cares about you: Some places insinuate that your job is stable because your job is not actually a job, it’s a membership into their family. Tech companies are some of the biggest offenders with this metaphor.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

It’s all bullshit, folks

If you noticed, all of the options given for finding job security involve someone giving it to you. Here is why that’s problematic:

• Having a job doesn’t mean it will pay you enough. Even if someone could promise you that your job will always be needed (here’s a fun article showing some of the extinct jobs people used to have), having a job forever doesn’t mean you will have enough income. What you are truly looking for is financial growth, where you can afford your lifestyle now and have a path to building wealth to support yourself and others in your old age. Even if you find a job that not only guarantees your employment for life but also gives you a 2–5% raise every year, your wealth will steadily decline due to inflation. In 2022 inflation in the US went over 9%, and it’s guaranteed to keep happening because of central banks, fractional reserve banking, and other fun nonsensical practices.
• Organizations can’t keep their promises if they’re broke. Imagine if your tiny local bookstore guaranteed that if you work for them long enough and do a good enough job, they’ll promote you to Book Wizard and pay you 7 figures a year for life. How long do you think their business will be able to keep that going? Employers are not all-powerful; the guarantees you receive require you to trust in the power and longevity of the source. Big entities are not immune to financial ruin due to their own folly or external factors. The entire institution doesn’t even need to fail; a tenured professor can easily become unemployed if their department’s funding gets cut.
• Seriously… employers don’t consider you family. At this moment in 2023, the technology sector is experiencing a massive contraction, with about 150,000 tech workers laid off last year. It’s only March, and we are well on our way to that number this year. This isn’t unusual: markets fluctuate and layoffs are a part of worker life. But the family metaphor was always a disgusting lie, attempting to capitalize on the benefits of the family business model without requiring actual families. Did they not realize the familial bonds of loyalty were based on blood ties? Or was it always disingenuous since they never intended to give the same loyalty back to their work family?
• You will be different in a few decades. Security promises have nothing to do with you enjoying your life. Think about how you like to live your life now, compared to 10 years ago. Do you think you are going to want to have the same job in 50 years? Committing yourself to a single job for life means you’re digging a rut for yourself, getting more and more comfortable doing one thing but making it harder to ever make a change.

OK, no job has security… now what?

It’s not all doom and gloom. I’m not trying to keep you from seeking stability in your career and income. I want you to understand that security is just an idea, a feeling you have based on confidence that you’ll keep having an income.

You should not trust any person or group to guarantee your ability to work and generate money.

Security comes from yourself

Your confidence in your ability to have income should mostly come from your knowledge that you can leverage your abilities to provide value to others, in a way that will get you paid even if you lose your current source of income. This may sound a little scary, but I hope you come to see this idea as liberating. You don’t have to trust that a company, industry, or job market will remain how it is now or get better. You can take your security into your own hands.

Photo by Blake Weyland on Unsplash

There are two ways to achieve security

1. Make obscene wealth at least once, so that you could technically never work again and still live the life you want
2. Make yourself endlessly adaptable and able to retain or restart your inflow of money

Telling people to go become wealthy is probably the most useless bit of advice ever given. The thing is, even if you win the lottery tomorrow you can lose it just as quickly, which is why I would personally advocate focusing on the second method which doesn’t exclude the first outcome. How do you become adaptable? Generally, that means three things:

1. Know the situation:

• Keep a close eye on the market that you work in, be aware of shifting winds
• Pay some attention (not too much, for mental health reasons) to big changes in the broader world: social, technological, and global events that might impact you

2. Always be ready to move:

• Always have proof of what makes you valuable: skills, past successes, etc. Regularly update the materials you have for finding income (resume, portfolios, work products, etc.)
• Interview for jobs occasionally even if you’re not looking for a move, just to keep yourself sharp and aware of both opportunities and shifting market conditions.

3. Increase your abilities (and thus value):

• Keep learning new skills. Spruce up your current skills if it helps you advance, but new skills give you more paths.
• Build a professional presence outside of your existing space. Visibility and networks are difficult to build on short notice.
• Build multiple sources of income. It’s not about which baskets you put your eggs in, this is about hatching some of those eggs into egg-laying chickens.

This is a bigger mindset shift than it may seem

What makes the idea of job security so harmful is how insidious it is. No one is forcing you to strive for it, or punishing you for ignoring it. But there are a small group of narratives that have been ingrained in you from a very young age that have framed seeking a single, stable job as your only reasonable path.

You were told to start thinking what you want to be when you grow up before you even knew what that meant. You were asked to decide on your ultimate career path before you understood the workplace. You’re told to find your calling and stick to it before you understood yourself. And you are constantly pushed to strive for the white picket fence and nuclear family, even though the ability to support that lifestyle through a single average salary income disappeared decades ago. You are brought up with an outdated, cookie-cutter idea of what a successful career is supposed to be, and told that anything else is risky.

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Let’s be clear: the “safe” options will almost certainly lead to financial insecurity in your later years and make you vulnerable to disruptions in employment. They will give you a false sense of security and make you trap yourself in an invisible prison that seems harder and harder to escape from the longer you stay.

Understanding and internalizing that reality is an undertaking in itself. Once you’ve removed the shackles, you realize that they were always plastic. And unlocked.