Experts are warning that tariffs on pharmaceuticals are likely to increase shortages of essential medications.
The governments ongoing investigation into the national security implications of importing pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients is widely understood as a precursor to sector-specific tariffs, which a White House advisor has said are likely. On the other hand, the administration recently issued a new executive order laying the groundwork for tariff exemptions for some pharmaceutical products imported from countries that reach trade agreements with the United States.
As a result, manufacturers, pharmacists, doctors and patients are in limbo. Digital health companies that make access to prescription medication simpler are also at risk.
But I already know firsthand what a drug shortage looks like. I am the CEO of Oar Health, a company that helps people struggling with alcohol misuse get access to prescription medication to drink less or quit. And naltrexone, the recommended frontline medication for treating alcohol use disorder, has been in shortage for more than a year.
Heres what Ive learned:
Patients suffer when essential medications are unavailable
Throughout the naltrexone shortage, I have heard from patients who have found medication critical to their recoveries. But instead of celebrating and building upon their progress, they were worried about continuing their treatment.
Retail and mail order pharmacies alike told patients that they could not refill their prescriptions nor provide a reliable estimate of when they would. Patients documented their experience and concern in social media posts.
As someone who took naltrexone for more than five years, I can relate to their unease. When a medication is proving helpful in ones recovery, the last thing a patient should be forced to do is remove that tool from their toolkit.
Beyond alcohol use disorder, direct-to-consumer telehealth companies like Ro, Hims, Nurx, and Cove have increased patient access to safe, effective medications across a broad range of health conditions. But access depends on availability. Tariffs on generic medications could harm patients who rely on everything from anti-depressants to birth control to migraine relievers to erectile dysfunction and hair loss treatments.
The generic drug supply chain is fragile
Americans often assume that generic medications will always be cheaply available from multiple manufacturers and at every pharmacy. This assumption is incorrect.
In the case of naltrexone, a shortage of the Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient meant that manufacturers had to slash production. Coupled with an increase in demand for the medications used to treat alcohol problems, shortages spread and prices went up.
But input shortages are not the only vulnerability in the supply chain. Manufacturing complexity, quality concerns, and geographic concentration have contributed to an increase in the number and duration of generic drug shortages according to the research organization U.S. Pharmacopeia. 253 drugs are in shortage in 2025 according to the American Society of Health System Pharmacists after reaching an all-time peak of 323 in 2024.
Because generic drug manufacturing, distribution and pharmacy dispensing all have very low profit margins, a cost increase including from tariffs at any point in the supply chain is likely to be disruptive. Facing even marginally higher costs, a manufacturer may decide that producing a generic drug is no longer economical. And, as our experience shows, the industry lacks the redundancy to make up the difference.
Industry can adapt, but not overnight
I am proud to say that we have kept medication in hand for every Oar Health member throughout the shortage. But it has not been easy.
Many of our members worked with us during the most acute phases of the shortage, shifting from shipments of 90 tablets to 30 tablets at a time out of concern for others who needed access to the medication. We also drastically reduced marketing budgets and briefly stopped accepting new patients, meaning that people who could have benefited from treatment did not.
Over time, we have seen API availability improve and manufacturers increase or restart production. But regulatory bottlenecks, manufacturing setup costs, and uncertainty about demand mean that bouncing back after a supply shock is a process measured in months and years, not days or weeks.
More than 18 months after the FDA officially declared a naltrexone shortage and almost two years after patients and pharmacists first began reporting problems, naltrexone remains in shortage.
This is unfortunately common. The average shortage lasts 18 months and can span as much as 15 years. Similarly, industry participants agree that reshoring manufacturing, a potential goal of tariffs, would be timely and costly.
The bottom line
I started Oar Health so that more of the 28 million Americans with alcohol use disorder could get access to safe, effective, FDA-approved medication proven to help them drink less or quit. Our more than 10,000 members and the millions of Americans who rely on essential generic medications are counting on policymakers to remember them.
Remember CDs? Theres a new company betting that, if you dont already, youre about to.
Jewel is a Norwegian company specializing in manufacturing high-end display cases for CDs. The brand recently soft-launched online in Europe and is planning to expand to the U.S. in the coming months. It offers products that range from an $130 freestanding case that fits four CDs to a $300, 16-slot case designed to be mounted directly onto the wall.
Launching a CD-based brand more than 20 years after CDs hit their peak feels like a counterintuitive prospect. After all, how many people even own a CD player these days? But Marius Brandl, Jewels founder, says the brands thesis is simple: Vinyl records have had their renaissance. CDs are next.
[Photo: Jewel]
Are CDs on the rise?
Retro tech and physical media have experienced an undeniable comeback, in part driven by young consumers looking to cut back on social media. Gadgets like iPods (yes, those are considered retro), Game Boys, film cameras, and even pagers have seen a resurgence.
And, as Brandl notes, that applies to the music industry, too. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), vinyl posted its 18th straight year of growth in 2024, generating $1.4 billion in retail revenue, its highest share of physical format revenue since 1984.
Meanwhile, CDs may have fallen out of fashion in the mid-2000s, but theyre not a dead medium. In 2024, the RIAA reports, 33 million CDs were sold in the U.S., up 1.5% from 2023.
[Photo: Jewel]
For some fanbases, theyre becoming a more popular collectors item: Taylor Swift, for example, has a longstanding partnership with Target and tends to sell several versions of her albums in the format, including the upcoming Life of a Showgirl album, which will include three exclusive CDs. Charli XCX also gave the CD an injection of instant cool last summer, when her brat CDs sold out almost instantly.
What’s interesting is the generation born before and after the year 2000, especially in Europe, have really, really been collecting [CDs], Brandl says. My feeling is that CDs will have a comeback.
[Photo: Jewel]
The making of a CD brand in 2025
Brandls idea for Jewela brand name inspired by the plastic jewel case that most CDs come inactually started back in the 90s, when he was in college. Brandl remembers attending a party where he saw a table strewn in CDs, and wondering to himself whether there might be a better way to organize and display them.
[Photo: Jewel]
At the time, Brandls concept of a grid-based display case received lots of positive feedback from his professors, who saw the CD as a promising new medium. He only made it to early development stages, though, before realizing that he couldnt find a way to both display the CDs and open their cases without damaging them, and the idea fizzled out.
[Video: Jewel]
When Brandls close friend convinced him to revive the idea in 2023, Brandl spent more than half a year developing the right blend of rubber to hold each jewel case inside his display prototype. The rubber, which lines two sides of each square-shaped slot,needed enough grip to keep the cases from sliding, but not so much that the cases would break when opened.
The rubber was the biggest challenge, and also how to be able to make it not to be too expensive to produce, Brandl says. He adds that the acrylic, aluminum, and hardware that serve as the backbone of the displays are all premium materials sourced from European manufacturers, which has bumped up the brands price points.
Instead of making it as cheap as possible with cheap materials, we thought, The ones who will buy this are probably the ones who like music so much that they have a nice Hi-Fi system, and they want new design solutions.
Given that Jewel just launched, Brandl says its difficult to measure sales numbers at this stage. From inside his street-level office in Oslo, though, he talks with interested customers every day who stop by to take a closer look at the product.
The people are from eight, nine yearsold to 82 years old,” Brandl says. I think the ones between 17 and 25 show the most interest. And I tell them, Your parents and grandparents and great grandparents listen to LPs. But the CDthat’s your generations physical connection to music.
We know that having friends at work is good for your performance and happiness. But could ChatGPT replace your happy hour bestie?
According to a new study from KPMG that surveyed more than 1,000 professionals, almost all (99%) would be open to the idea of an AI chatbot assuming the role of close friend or trusted companion at work.
That same study teases out a separate, also compelling thread: 45% of workers reported feelings of loneliness at work. Thats a huge jump, up nearly double from last year. On top of that, the survey found that friendship seems to be a big priority for most workerseven over money.
More than half (57%) of those surveyed said they would take a salary 10% below market rate if it meant being able to have close friends at work, as opposed to accepting a salary 10% above market rate and having no close friends at work. (Whether theyd be willing to take a pay cut for a chatbot is another matter.)
Still, it begs the question: Would people settle for Gemini as a close friend at work? The survey results suggest its possible. Plus, compared to “traditional” (read: human) colleagues, AI is always happy to assist, is hyperefficient, and doesnt complain when delegated tasks or when offered criticism.
(Theres also the fact that one in three U.S. employees say they would rather scrub a toilet than ask a human colleague for help.)
From therapists to relationship counselors to romantic partners, AI-powered digital companions are rapidly emerging as alternatives to any number of human relationships. Now AI may well be ready to assume its newest role of work spouse.
This reflects a deeper truth: People are craving connection, Sandy Torchia, vice chair of talent and culture at KPMG, told Fast Company. When something shows up consistently, listens without judgment, and responds in a supportive way, it starts to feel familiareven comforting.
We already know that having a work bestie or office ally isnt just good for happiness, its good for productivity and performance. Employees in the KPMG survey said that having workplace friendships increases their motivation to go above and beyond their job description. But right now, we have zero idea whether any of these benefits transfer to a human-chatbot work friendship.
What we do know is that the worker value on friendship is growing; 87% of employees consider work friendships “very important. And the youngest workers value workplace friendships more than their older counterparts: 90% of Gen Zers surveyed said those friendships are very important, compared to 77% of boomers.
The trend is playing out alongside an increase in public familiarity and comfort with AI tools. In the past couple of years, the share of U.S. employees who say they have used AI in their role a few times a year or more has nearly doubled, from 21% to 40%, according to a Gallup survey in June. While this is predominantly for work-related tasks, chatting with AI can also reduce stress, anxiety, and loneliness for some users, according to a 2023 study published in The Journal of Medical Internet Research.
Of course, correlation doesnt mean causation when it comes to chatbots being used more as stand-ins for human friends at work. But even if employees dont want AI to step into the role of friend, almost all surveyed in the KPMG report said they would like to use AI to aid their friendships in some capacity; 98% said they would like AI systems to connect them with coworkers based on shared interests.
Its still early days in terms of widespread chatbot adoption, so who knows what will happen. For now, dont count on a bot to fully replace your gossip buddy by the watercooler.
AI can mimic aspects of friendship; it cant replace the depth, nuance, and emotional resonance of human relationships, Torchia says. Thats where employers have a real opportunityto engineer environments where authentic connection can thrive.
More than a month after the Trump administration forced a nearly complete wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut to stop constructioncosting the developers more than $2 million per daythe project just resumed work.
On August 22, the government issued a stop-work order for the Revolution Wind project, which is designed to power 350,000 homes. It cited unspecified national security concerns despite years of review by federal agencies including the Department of Defense. Hundreds of workers were left idle. On September 22, a federal judge granted the developers a preliminary injunction to allow construction to continue. Judge Royce Lamberth, appointed to the U.S. District Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, said that the Trump administration’s arguments were “the height of arbitrary and capricious,” and noted that if construction didn’t begin immediately, the project was at risk of failing completely.
But the project, which is 80% done, still faces some risks. And the governments attack makes it less likely for other offshore wind projects to be builteven after Trump is out of office.
The Trump administration could still challenge the project
The government has 60 days to file an appeal. That may not happen: Its possible that the administration could give up. The courts opinion is right on in terms of the utter illegality of what the government was attempting to do here, says Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation. So it may be that they just decide to take the loss. But they might appeal, and if they do, the developer has to weigh that risk against the urgency of getting this project completed.
One industry legal expert told Fast Company that even within the administration, some Interior Department staff want to focus on other thingslike building more oil and gas projects or a $625 million plan to “rescue coal”rather than trying to kill the offshore wind industry, especially at a time when the president argues that theres an energy emergency.
Still, Trump may want to appeal. The administration has what weve described as a retaliatory posture towards offshore wind, says Timothy Fox, managing director at the research firm ClearView Energy Partners. To the extent that it doesnt like losing, they may try to look for any avenue or any lever they can pull to try to stop this project.”
It’s different from the Empire Wind project in New York (which the administration also tried to stop but then let proceed after New York’s governor reportedly made a backroom deal with Trump to allow an unpopular gas pipeline to also move forward in the state). There, Trump can point to getting something in return. In the case of Revolution Wind, the administration clearly lost, and may want to keep fighting.
What are the odds of an appeal?
An appeal is unlikely to succeed. The government would have to argue that there was a clear reason to stop the project, something that the first judge found that it had failed to do. But “who’s on the bench hearing the appeal is incredibly important,” says Mark James, a professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School. The case shouldn’t win on the merits, experts say, but judges sympathetic to Trump might find creative ways to interpret the law. (That could also be true if the case reaches the Supreme Court, though its more likely that the Court would decline to hear the case; it chose not to hear a case about the neighboring Vineyard Wind project.)
Agencies took a long time to carefully review the project, like other wind projects, before the permits were issued in the first place. “Part of the reason offshore wind projects have, to date, overcome judicial challenges was because the Biden administration knew that these projects would be challenged in court,” Fox says. “They didnt want to move fast in the short term just to lose on the back end. So they took their time issuing permits that could withstand judicial review.”
Sinding Daly adds, What I would say is that in normal times, it’s probably pretty low risk to go forward [with construction] because of the speciousness of the lawsuit. But we’re not in normal times, clearly. And so it’s very hard to make predictions.”
In theory, the government could also try to find a new reason to stop work on the project, though that would go back to the first judge and almost certainly be shot down. The administration can also carefully monitor construction to look for any potential compliance issues that would allow it to temporarily stop or slow the project again.
Construction is racing forward
As the threat from the government continues, workers are racing forward on the wind farm. In total, the project will include 65 massive wind turbines that will power homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Forty-five turbines are in place now. Installing the remaining 20 will take around three months. Crews also have to finish installing cables and connecting the power. Testing everything will take more time.
It’s not clear how much can be finished before winter weather pauses the work. There could be other challenges, including whether specialized vessels that the developers need to lease for construction will still be available as long as the company needs them. Revolution Wind declined to comment on how much the delay over the past month has changed the overall timeline for the project.
It may still be possible that it could finish next year, as planned, barring further legal delays. Once complete, since all of the federal permits were already issued, the project should be safe to begin sending power to shore.
A chilling effect on offshore wind
The government is still trying to revoke its approval of multiple other offshore wind projects, including SouthCoast Wind, a giant development near Massachusetts, and the Maryland Offshore Wind Project. Other projects are facing lawsuits that the federal government is declining to fight.
The industry is also facing rising costs. It’s extremely unlikely that any new projects will start during the Trump administration. But it’s also becoming less viable for projects to move forward afterward. States like Massachusetts have told utilities they need to invest in offshore wind. But that won’t work without federal support as well.
“I think this administration is purposely trying to scare away the industry even after they leave office,” says Fox. “A future administration may support the industryeven to the extent that the Biden administration didbut developers and financiers may be wary of investing in a capital-intensive sector with a long lead time that faces such demonstrable election risk. To put it more simply, can yo plan a project and get it online all within a four-year period of an administration that says they like offshore wind, before the next Trump 3.0?”
It could set a precedent beyond just the offshore wind industry. A future climate-focused president could decide to revoke existing permits for gas projects, for example. “A future administration could say, ‘Okay, let’s use this growing executive power to stop projects that we don’t like. Even if a court ultimately strikes down that action, like you’ve seen with Revolution Wind, it just injects so much uncertainty and risk, Fox says, adding, “We’re hearing from some of our clients that this is among the most difficult times to invest in the energy sector, which is ironic, given the growing power demand. The political uncertainty is growing.”
As press releases go, it was a mic drop moment.
On September 4, OpenAI announced that it was coming after LinkedIn. And it was coming after job search specifically.
For those unfamiliar with the story, it was reported across multiple sources that not content with torpedoing Google, education, interpersonal relationships, and entire industries such as psychiatry or management consultancy (both smugly considered untouchable until about 15 minutes ago), OpenAI is now coming after the age-old industry of human resources.
Specifically, the $300 billion company wants to streamline the process of hiring by automatically matching candidates to roles via context alone, without the need for titles, résumés, applications, or screeninga fully automated, frictionless match between resource and need, run at zero cost in a fraction of the time it would take Becky from HR to book meeting room 14B next Tuesday, but with near-infinite scope and efficiency.
Its yet another cold, logical extension of artificial intelligences purported ability to reduce human intuition down to a series of predictable algorithmic factors.
LinkedIn Dethroned?
Now, lets be fair. OpenAIs proposition assumes (probably rightly) that virtually all future roles will require some degree of AI knowledge or fluency. Moreover, the press release breathlessly proposes an OpenAI Academy, one that will train the machine-picked workers of the future on how to best serve their artificial overlords.
But will this really be enough to dethrone LinkedIn? An incumbent platform of over 1 billion people who now spend the bulk of their time not in job search or hiring, but in perpetual AI comment-discussions about the nature of authenticity while posting Canva-selfies of their weekend getaway to Puglia?
Perhaps we should first recognize that human resources is one of the oldest and most safeguarded functions within the corporate world, holding out defiantly as personal assistance, finance, and even marketing have been variously usurped by automation.
Its a curiously old-fashioned industry in many respects, relying on judgments about physical appearance and behavioral norms such as eye contact and punctualitycharacteristics that in any other sector would be subordinated to ones ability to deliver value or output.
But recently, HR has gone through something of a transformation, and its safe to say that LinkedIn has been at the heart of that.
In fact, the worlds largest business platform been an unwitting catalyst for an onslaught of AI-driven fraudboth from candidates (either building fake AI profiles or even replacing themselves in Zoom interviews with omniscient AI avatars), or from dubious recruiters (leveraging advanced AI tools to build fictitious companies in order to solicit payment or personal details).
The market is now flooded with AI cover letters, AI résumés and AI-curated portfolios, while on the other side of the table, the screening process is often (and increasingly) handed off to AI scanning software, in order to save valuable time filtering out unsuitable candidates before proceeding to a final interviewone that may ultimately be conducted and processed by an AI avatar.
Surely then its simply a short step to full automation, one that removes these very ghosts in the hiring machine?
Perhaps. But Id suggest that any scholar of organizational psychology would hold a very different view.
The intangibles
We can look, for example, at evidence highlighting the predictive power of nonverbal cues such as vocal tone, facial expressions, and body language in forecasting later job performance. A 2022 Harvard Business Review piece, on the other hand, cautioned that automated interviews may be prone to missing these types of intangible characteristicspotentially valuable employee attributes (say, curiosity or resilience) that might only be registered via live human interaction.
Yet suffice to say, these same factors are also deeply subjective. Economists have long shown that reliance on intuition and first impressions can also be a major source of bias in recruitment, perpetuating disparities around race, gender, and class.
AI proxies
Whatever the case, the stark reality is that we now find ourselves in an era where a growing majority of both candidates and recruiters are using AI as proxies. And in this world, the very notion of authentic observationwhether helpful or notis starting to erode.
ButI hear you cry as onesurely HR isnt just about hiring? Its about people management, professional development, organizational health, and so many other things?
Yesexcept that of all these functions, hiring has historically required the highest amount of dedicated resource, training, and physical presence, far outstripping what can now be done by AI in areas such as coaching, psychometric testing, and even therapy. If we delegate the very function of organizational building itself, what remains must necessarily become diminished, at least in part.
To circle back then to OpenAI, perhaps iterative machine learning will finally win out. Perhaps time might tell us that the match between employee and role is near-flawless in an AI, dehumanized world. And yet, it may also be this very unpredictability of human nature that will represent the biggest loss to a future workforce.
And as to the suggestion that OpenAIs hiring platform will take down LinkedIn itself?
If it can somehow balance hiring efficiency with the high level of fluffy, eye-pleasing pseudo-business interactions that now so predominate on LinkedIn itself, perhaps.
But to do that, youd need to first understand a little of the idiosyncrasies of human nature, in order to build (and foster) an appropriately sticky forumif only for the reason that business is a gateway into so many other areas of recreational and emotional life.
And doing that, Im afraid to say, still requires a deeply human sensibility.
You dont need a perfect jump shot or the exhaustive knowledge (or opinions) of Stephen A. Smith to land a career in sports. You can get far on passion and a desire to spread that love of the game throughout an increasingly fan-driven world. Sports marketingwhich encompasses everything from managing multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals and crafting social media campaigns for local teams to coordinating fan activation at the Super Bowlis one of the most robust components of the sports industry, which is worth at least $500 billion globally.
To understand the state of play in this arena, Fast Company analyzed nearly 2,800 job listings on Google for Jobs between April and June 2025. We classified hiring organizations into four types: property rights holders (e.g., leagues and teams), media organizations, brands, and agencies. And we divided the jobs themselves into three categories: strategy, creative, and experiential. We then looked at the salaries, job requirements, and locations involved.
The results reveal an industry thats more accessible and geographically diverse than you might expect, with plenty of opportunities for people lacking in both educational pedigree and, presumably, athletic ability.
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Whos HiringProperty rights holders account for the highest number of jobs listed for any organization type, at about 34% of listings. And its not just the most recognizable leagues and teams looking for help, though the L.A. Clippers are in the market for a director of sales innovation. Miami University, youth sports company 3Step Sports, and the United Football League’s (UFLs) Memphis Showboats are all hiring. Media companies (such as Amazon and NBCUniversal) account for more than 26% of jobs; brands (think Nike, Lululemon, and Red Bull) represent more than 20%, and agencies (like Playfly Sports, Excel Sports Management, Two Circles, and Endeavor) make up more than 18%.
But these different types of organizations arent uniformly looking for the same kinds of people. Media companies are the likeliest to hire for creative roles, with 41% of listings geared toward jobs developing and shepherding content. Agencies and brands are disproportionately likely to headhunt for people working in strategy, with those roles accounting for 60% and 52% of openings, respectively. And property rights holders need people to promote game day, making those kinds of companies the most likely to hire people to fill positions in experiential marketing.
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GeographyAlthough remote work accounts for the highest number of listings, two cities emerge as sports marketing hubs: Atlanta and New York. (Chicago is a distant third.) What explains Atlantas prominence? Its home to five professional sports teams: the Hawks (NBA), Dream (WNBA), United (MLS), Falcons (NFL), and Braves (MLB). Its also the HQ for brands known for getting their names in front of sports fans, such as Coke, Home Depot, and Delta. Charlotte, at No. 5, punches above its weight with its three major-league teams. Its also home to the Charlotte Motor Speedway, plus branches of major agencies like Octagon and Wasserman.
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SalaryAcross organization types, salaries start out roughly the same (north of $50,000 on average) and increase mostly in lockstep. Nike, despite 2024 revenues being down nearly 5% year over year, is among the brands shelling out the most, offering about $250,000 for two upper-level roles. Amazon MGM Studios is among the highest-paying media companies, dangling $223,250 for a senior-level job. As far as agencies go, Game Seven and Saatchi are the top spenders. Game Sevens $375,000 for a global head of accounts is the highest salary in our entire dataset.
Full-Time Versus ContractThe vast majority of sports marketing jobs are full-time, at about 81%. The second most common type of employment are internships at more than 8.3% of openings, followed by part-time jobs at 7.7%, and contractors at a surprisingly low 3%.
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EducationIf youre looking to break into the industry and havent even started your freshman year of college, your best bet is to major in marketing. Forty-five percent of listings that stated a preference for any educational degree mentioned marketing in particular. But thats not your only option. The next most common requests are business (28%), communications (24.1%), sports management (15.2%), and journalism (7.4%). Brands are the most likely employers to ask for marketing degrees: 73.3% of jobs at these companies require them.
But theres a good chance you wont need a degree at all. The majority of agency and media listings dont ask for one. Neither do nearly 40% of listings from brands nor 30% of listings from property rights holders. Of course, whether employers quietly prefer candidates to have one is another matter.
MethodologyWe extracted jobs from the Google for Jobs search module monthly from April to June 2025, resulting in 2,774 jobs when duplicates were removed. We used a combination of Gemini and manual tech token search to extract information on salary, company type, job type, and educational background. The categorization of jobs as full-time or contract/internship and their geographic locations were contained as separate structured fields in Googles data. Monthly and hourly salaries were standardized to yearly rates by multiplying the rate by 12 for monthly salaries, and by 2,080 for hourly salaries.
In summer 2019, Bob McDonough took a full stack web development coding bootcamp at the University of Pennsylvania. An English-turned-telecommunications major in college, McDonough had been working at a bar while sending out job applications for positions he barely wanted. Most paid below $50,000 a year, an undesirable salary for a 27-year-old in Philadelphia.
McDonough says his degree really wasn’t doing it for him. So, I figured I’d add a certificate to stack my résumé, he says.
What McDonough was doing was upskillingthe practice of learning new skills or sharpening old ones to attain maximum desirability in the job market. While taking this web dev course, McDonough wasnt sure it would be worth the time and cost. But by the end, he had a polished portfolio, he says, a filled-out GitHub and new skills added on LinkedIn.
Within three months of completing the course, McDonough had a salaried job at a design studio. Someone saw my profile and gave me a call pretty quickly, he says.
But hes not sure job seekers could replicate his experience today. The skillsets deemed desirable seem to be shifting faster than ever, and job seekers are reporting dismal experiences on the market. In the 2010s, “upskilling” may have just meant enrolling in a coding academy and hoping for the best. But fast, seismic changes like the rise of AI have quickly made a path to professional staying power much murkier.
Ten years ago, completing a certificate might have been enough to land a role in high-demand fields, says Nora Gardner, senior partner at McKinsey. The days of taking a General Assembly course and landing a plum coding job may be gone.
In this Premium story, youll learn:
Hear from workers who upskilledand whether or not it led to new jobs
Learn out-of-the-box ways to make yourself desirable beyond “learn Python”
What employers are actually looking for, beyond certifications on LinkedIn
The uncertainty surrounding AI is immense, and the job market continues to be rough: In an August survey by the New York Federal Reserve, participants reported a new low of 44.9% likelihood of finding a new job should they lose theirs.
On top of that, research from the McKinsey Global Institute suggests around 10% of American workers may need to switch jobs by 2030. But 45% of employed survey respondents said that their need for more or different work experience, relevant skills, credentials, or education was the top barrier to finding a new job.
And yet, the way to upskill effectively doesnt resemble the path McDonough took just a few years back. But that doesnt mean upskilling courses are obsolete. Combined with continued on-the-job development, the dedication can communicate to employers the soft skills it takes to succeed in a rapidly evolving workforce: adaptability, willingness to learn, and resilience.
Mixed messages
Multiple sources told Fast Company that employers are emphasizing experience over specific skillsets. But learning the latest tech in the workforce goes a long way.
Diana Rocha, 37, a London-based product manager at predictive hiring company Applied, took a DeepLearning AI course on Coursera a few months ago. Then she went to Workeraa site where people can test their upskilled skillsand tested in the 75th percentile.
She put that all on her LinkedIn in August, a quiet month professionally in London, but immediately saw at least two to three companies or recruiters reaching out to her per week, compared to the previous one to two per month, she says. Rocha originally got her Applied job by upskilling, too, via a masters program and Coursera courses on behavioral economics.
However, Rocha isnt sure the recruiters recently reaching out on LinkedIn were only attracted to her new AI prowess. LinkedIn also shows her years of product management roles. Rocha says employers who contacted her were looking for that alongside the newer AI skills, so its unclear if upskilling truly led to the spike in recruiter interest.
However, McKinseys Gardner says its the mix of both existing and upskilled experience that will most likely get candidates seen.
If youve worked in your field for decades, certifications can signal commitment to learning, she says. But the differentiator is how theyre put into practice. Applying AI tools to improve workflow efficiency demonstrates adaptability in a way a credential alone cannot.
Easier than you think?
Today, McDonough has a new job, coordinating web content at a law firm. But his experience from the design role he landed via upskilling taught him to stay on top of the latest technology. He says he scouts YouTube and Reddit to see what people are talking about, he says. If I click on something that has 300 comments, then I know Im probably in the right spot.
Learning while on the job is key to useful upskilling. While Molly Johnson-Jones, CEO and cofounder of job search platform Flexa, says organizations hawking upskilling courses often sell a dream, she adds that workers looking to switch careers can start doing so within their current company.
Johnson-Jones says to identify what bits of your role could seep into moving towards that new role. Say you want to transition from marketing into tech: Find ways to collaborate more with your companys tech team, she suggests. Get to know the department leads.
Doing that relies on soft skills: empathy, interpersonal awareness, and emotional intelligence that make workers effective collaborators and pleasant to be around. Were told these are the skills that AI will never snatch away from humans. Are those things even upskillable, though?
Lisa Lie, founder of microlearning app Learna, thinks so. Her company provides 10-minute-or-less lessons on skills like boosting confidence, thinking differently, and working with anyone. Run by experts like psychologists and performance coaches, each short lesson begins by setting out a problem, followed by the expert walking users through the best language to use to diffuse a contentious situation with a coworker, for example. Lie doesnt call them soft skills, because they’re not optional or easy, she says. If AI is taking care of repeatable tasks, the value of people skills just went up.
‘You have to stay on top of it’
Upskilling can feel like throwing yet another stressor atop the existing mountain of stress that comes with being a working rofessional. But Gen Z appears ready to meet this future. Per Flexas Work Index study, which looked at more than 40,000 job posts and almost 30,000 job seekers, members of Gen Z are 68% more likely than older generations to prioritize personal development in their job search.
Though millennials, both McDonough and Rocha have adopted this approach. Based on their own experiences landing new jobs as a direct result of upskillingit does seem to work. And if the youngest workers are prioritizing upskilling, it may well be the future.
The tech moves so quickly, McDonough says. Instead of just taking a course like he did in 2019, he suggests job seekers looking to upskill today stay up to date, read, [and] listen to podcasts on what people are doing.
The AI hype is going to calm down at some point, says Rocha. And yet? I wouldnt like to be left out because I didnt upskill on that front.
McDonough agrees. AI might be todays hottest thing, but company executives are always reading about the latest trends, tech, and shifts, deciding what skills to hire for.
You have to stay on top of it, he says, or else youll fall behind.
A decade ago, inventor Jeneva Bell launched a startup called Ruggable that seemed radical at the time: A rug brand with products that you could throw in your home washing machine when they got dirty.
Rugs have been a household staple for thousands of years, adding warmth and color. But wool and cotton rugs are delicate and require expert cleaningwhich creates challenges for people who have toddlers, or pets, or cups of coffee that occasionally spill.
Bell knew there was another way, so she designed a rug with two partsa base and a polyester top layerthat could be separated and cleaned in a home washing machine. She believed that if she created a product that looked and felt like a traditional rug but was easily washable she would have a massive business. And she was right: Ruggable now has nearly 1,000 employees, and its annual revenue is in the nine-figure range.
[Photo: courtesy Ruggable]
Today the company is launching its most innovative product yet. It’s called the All-in-One rug, and it doesn’t have a separate base and top layer. Instead, it looks and feels much like a traditional rug. It has a textured, cushioned feel, but its been carefully designed to be rolled up and washed in a home machine. The company is releasing this new design in two textures, Plush and Tufted, in four sizes, priced from $119 for runners to $1,299 for the largest size (10 feet by 14 feet).
[Photo: courtesy Ruggable]
Washability Isn’t Easy
Bell spent two years tinkering in her garage before launching Ruggable. She took apart dozens of traditional rugs to understand their structure, identifying which parts were designed to provide padding, texture, or softness. The final rug she created was a two-part set: a rug base that went on the floor, and a soft top layer made of polyester that could be removed, thrown in a household washing machine, and laundered at least 20 times without wearing out. “Jeneva effectively deconstructed the rug into its core elements,” says Nicole Otto, Ruggable’s new CEO.
The company took off quickly. And while some consumers loved the original rug system, feedback from others proved instrumental to continued innovation. The very first Ruggable rugs were very thin, with almost no pile. They added warmth to a cold floor and were useful under wheeled office chairs, but they couldn’t compete with thicker, fluffier rugs. So Ruggable’s team developed plusher, yet still washable, upper layers.
“The past decade has been all about reconstructing the rug, but doing so in a way that makes it washable,” Otto says.
New Tufted (left) and Plush designs from Ruggable [Photo: courtesy Ruggable]
The idea for an all-in-one rug came in part from customer feedback. There are some benefits to a two-part rug system, like being able to swap out the outer later seasonally. But some customers found it laborious to have to separate the outer and bottom layers every time the rug needed to be washed. “Some people also found it hard to perfectly line up the two layers or get out the air bubbles between the layers,” says Maria O’Brien, Ruggable’s VP of global design.
To design the all-in-one, Ruggable’s R&D team had to be strategic about each layer. They wanted to create a plush, cushioned feel under foot, which adds bulk. Adding a base layer to serve as a rug pad increases the size and weight of the final product. All of these factors affect washability; if the rug is too thick or rigid, it won’t fit into a home machine.
[Photo: courtesy Ruggable]
For several years, Ruggable tested different materials in its prototypes. The result is the All-in-One collection, which comes in two textures: Tufted, with a 7-millimeter pile height; and Plush, with a 14-millimeter pile height. Both are made from 100% polyester that has a waterproof barrier for stain resistance. Theyre also both significantly thicker than the companys original flat woven designs, which are just 2 millimeters high, as well as most other washable rugs on the market, which tend to be fairly thin.
Originally, the Ruggable team wanted to create an even plusher, fluffier rug with a higher pile, but being washable was key. (Tufted All-in-One rugs up to 8 feet by 10 feet are compatible with home washers; Plush rugs up to 6 feet by 9 feet are compatible with home washers. They weigh between 10 pounds and 85 pounds, depending on size.) This outer layer is now glued to a middle layer of foam that adds a cushioned feel, and then a thin backing that isnonslip, serving as a kind of rug pad.
“When you’re designing products, you’re usually cost engineering,” O’Brien says. “But here, we were weight engineering. We needed to make sure the final product was flexible, and not too stiff, dense, or tight to fit in a washing machine.”
[Photo: courtesy Ruggable]
A big market
A decade after Ruggable’s founding, washable rugs are more common, as consumers are looking for low-maintenance home decor solutions. According to a report by analytics firm Market Intelo, the global washable rug market was valued at $6.2 billion last year, and its forecasted to hit $13.7 billion by 2033. While Market Intelo’s report notes that Ruggable is a standout player in the space, theres increased competition, including Lorena Canals, Karastan, and Nourison. In fact, washable rugs are ubiquitous, available everywhere from Ikea and Walmart to Amazon.
[Photo: courtesy Ruggable]
Ruggable aims to maintain its dominance through continued innovation. To meet consumers varying aesthetic preferences, O’Brien says the company has been open to collaborations. It has worked with designers Iris Apfel, Jonathan Adler, and Justina Blakeney, the Netflix show Bridgerton, and Architectural Digest magazine, among others. Since Ruggable manufactures its rugs in its own factories in California and Illinois using digital printing technology, it can make rugs on demand, allowing for a wide array of offerings.
Ruggable is now trying to expand beyond its primary market of the United States. North America currently leads the washable rug market, making up 38% of global market share, but Europe and the Asia-Pacific region are now showing interest in the trend. Otto says Ruggable is investing heavily in expanding to Australia, the U.K., Germany, and France. “Having such a diverse range of styles allows us to connect with a diverse consumer base around the world,” she says. “We’re finding that wanting a rug that can be easily washed is a universal desire.”
Below, Joe Nucci shares five key insights from his new book, Psychobabble: Viral Mental Health Myths & the Truths to Set You Free.
Joe Nucci is a licensed psychotherapist. As a content creator, he contextualizes mental health misinformation. His videos at @joenuccitherapy reached over 10 million people in the first six months of posting and his writing can be found in his newsletter, Psychobabble.
Whats the big idea?
Psychobabble replaces mental health misconceptions with liberating truths that can help readers avoid misinformation, navigate important debates in the mental health field, and better maneuver their own therapy journeys. The problem is not that therapy has gone mainstream, but that some of the assumptions we have absorbed from therapy culture are actually holding us back from healing, growing, and solving our problems.
1. Psychotherapy heals mental illness, not problems of living.
Therapy works, but it doesnt work for everything. Somewhere along the way, as mental health got destigmatized, we started to believe we could apply therapy to more than just mental illness. We started to believe it could save us from more than depression, trauma, and addiction. We started to believe that it could make us the ideal partner, the perfect parent, or help us achieve profound psychological comfort in all aspects of life.
Unfortunately, there is no pill and no therapeutic intervention that can erase all of lifes struggles. And yet, therapy is often marketed as a cure-all for anything life throws at you.
Of course, theres nothing wrong with going to therapy to vent or if youre bored or lonely. Furthermore, therapy can be quite effective in helping you with subclinical or nondiagnostic problems, like dating issues or struggles with a life transition.
But there is a big difference between needing therapy and being able to benefit from it. Knowing where that line is can be really helpful in terms of maximizing how to get the most benefit from your therapy journey. It makes you a smarter consumer of therapy services and better at navigating self-help misinformation. Maybe you need to go to therapy, or maybe the answer to your problem can be found elsewhere. If youre not sure, speaking to a qualified therapist can help you figure that out.
2. Mental health is about agency, not identity.
One of the dangers of therapy culture going viral is that mental health has become a form of identity and social currency. In certain places, mental health has become popularized. People collect labels like badges, flaunting their self-awareness:
I am anxiously attached.
I am neurodivergent.
I am an empath.
In the book, I share a patients story that is all too common. She could articulate every piece of her psychological history. She was practiced at naming her emotions and fluent in therapy-speak. But she wasnt changing. She wasnt healing. She was stuck and suffering from it.
She didnt need more self-awareness. While becoming self-aware is often the first step, the magic of therapy isnt about the analysis; its about translating that insight into action. It is about having hard conversations, naming her needs, and making the call shed been avoiding for weeks.
Diagnosis is a doorway, not a destination.
Mental health shouldnt be about figuring out what you are. Its about being able to transform your attachment style, optimizing your life around your neurodivergency, or harnessing your empathy in an adaptive way. Its about building your capacity to be better. Diagnosis is a doorway, not a destination. A diagnosis is useful in the sense that it informs a treatment plan.
Holding onto your diagnosis as an identity without building the capacity for agency is just taking extra steps to stay exactly where you are in life. That is not the promise of the mental health field. The promise is to transform what you can and accept the rest as problems of living.
3. Therapists are not value-neutral.
Therapists are taught to be nonjudgmental, but nonjudgmental doesnt mean value-free. Every therapist brings a worldview into the room. They have their own pasts, politics, and values.
A bad therapist will pretend that they are perfectly neutral. This kind of therapist is blissfully unaware of how their own personal lives impact the work you are trying to accomplish in the session.
A good therapist will be aware that they are not a blank slate. They are self-aware enough to consider how they might say something thats more about them than about you or why you are seeking their help. They will withhold sharing when its not clinically appropriate.
But a great therapist? A great therapist can be simultaneously aware of how their past or personal values might influence them while honoring that your past and life philosophies may differ. They may even talk about their differences to assist in your healing.
A good therapist will be aware that they are not a blank slate.
The unfortunate truth is that some therapists feel emboldened to let their personal worldview encroach on their patients worldview. Some therapists see themselves as activists advancing a certain agenda. It could be political or philosophical. It might mean encouraging a client to end a relationship, label a parent as toxic, or reframe social dynamics as systemic harm. Sometimes thats warranted. But sometimes its projection.
4. Tragedies dont always result in trauma.
Trauma is real, but so is the casual misuse of the term. Not everything bad that happens to you is a trauma. Its inaccurate to say that events are traumatic in themselves because two people can get into the same car accident and one will develop PTSD while the other one will not. A trauma response is not about the past. Its about the present moment and your current relationship to the thing that happened to you.
Sometimes, pain metabolizes naturally. Sometimes, people move forward without assigning their suffering a trauma diagnosis. And thats not repressionits capacity. By insisting that everyone has trauma, we risk flattening a wide range of emotional experiences into one narrow framework. We must consider the dynamics of grief, growth, and the full range of negative human experiences that shape our lives.
Disappointment, regret, embarrassment, and heartbreak are hard, but they are not necessarily traumatic. Calling them trauma can subtly reinforce the idea that we are fragile and need clinical intervention to process every difficulty. This rebranding is surely good for therapists who want a steady stream of patients, but the idea culturally undermines resilience and turns the lens inward in ways that are often disempowering.
5. Therapy-speak can be medicine, or a weapon.
One of the best things about therapy is that sometimes, when you name omethingwhen something becomes conscious through languagethat thing no longer has power over you. Ive seen firsthand how being able to name trauma or abuse can provide relief almost instantly. Ive personally experienced the agency Ive gained from being able to articulate a dynamic that was previously ineffable.
But if language can heal us, it can also hurt us:
A patient once said, Im drawing a boundary, right after cutting off a friend without explanation. Was it a boundary? Or was it a way to avoid a hard conversation?
He gaslit me sometimes means He disagreed with me.
Im dysregulated becomes shorthand for I dont want to talk about this.
We think were speaking the language of healing. Sometimes, were just dressing up our defenses. Sometimes, using psychology jargon is just a logical fallacyan appeal to authority. When we do this in a way that allows us to be more disconnected from ourselves and from each other, that is the opposite of the promise of the field of mental health.
Learning these concepts is a little bit like learning a new language. At the beginning, its important to stay rigid with your grammar and pronunciation. Over time, as you become more fluent, its less about the words you use and more about how you use them. Its not about labeling gaslighting correctly or incorrectly. Its about knowing how to handle it when somebody disagrees with you and knowing what to do if somebody is trying to gaslight you.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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