Mid-Career Stall: Are You One of the 1 in 4 Workers Stuck?
It’s not looking too good for the mid-career crowd right now. The career ladder is getting shorter and leading to…well, nowhere.
According to research from the Burning Glass Institute, nearly 1 in 4 white-collar professionals are experiencing a mid-career stall (with their research highlighting this occurrence on career histories spanning 25 years). A “stall”, as defined by Burning Glass Institute, “is sustained stagnation in both wage growth and advancement for professionals at the mid-career mark (noted as 10-15 years into their career).
And this stagnation isn’t just prevalent in one industry either.
The data shows those in Public Administration (30.2%), Real Estate (28.9%) have the highest rates, while Finance and Insurance (26.6%) and Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (23.2%) also make up a large portion as well.
This is a huge problem because a stall (especially if not corrected early) doesn’t impact your job title, but affects everything connected to your professional reputation such as your earning potential, your sense of progress, and your long-term career trajectory.
Burning Glass Institute found that stalled professionals can miss out on tens of thousands of dollars in wages over time, with the average stalled software developer, for example, missing out on $43,000 in wages over the course of 15 years. And that's before factoring in the bonuses, leadership experience, and career capital that never materialized either.
The equally disheartening part is the data doesn't fully capture the impact of the personal cost. There's a certain kind of frustration that comes with working hard to climb the ladder, only to discover the next rung is broken, leaving you stuck while others move ahead. It just hits a certain way. You feel shame, disappointment, and helplessness, questioning your own capacity and whether this is just a season or something more permanent.
The researchers summarized the experience quite eloquently: "Employment is necessary, but not sufficient for sustained prosperity.”
In other words, having a job doesn’t make a difference if it’s not propelling you forward financially, opening doors to advance your network, allowing you to upskill, and setting you up for success.
Period.
And to further quote the Burning Glass Institute: “Career momentum matters.”
That may be true, but so does being in the position to gain that momentum and having the ability to recognize the signs of when it’s time to leave or pivot.
You may be sitting there thinking, “Well, I’m no longer in my early years, so what are my options?”
First, it’s adopting a mindset shift and coming to the realization that a mid-career stall isn't a dead end, it simply requires a different kind of thinking than what got you here.
It means pausing long enough to honestly assess where you are and being open to the possibility that a new direction is closer than you think. And you may need to be more flexible than before.
If you’re interested in learning how to put everything into motion, a free discovery call might be a good place to start.
