The workforce landscape has undergone a profound transformation, with five key trends emerging as central to the future of work in 2025: mental health, disability justice, bridging generational divides, class solidarity and labor organizing.

Understanding these trends is crucial for business leaders, policymakers, and employees alike to foster a resilient, equitable, and thriving work environment.

Mental Health

Mental health has gone from a taboo topic just a decade ago to one of the most important issues. The COVID19 pandemic brought to light the critical need for mental health support, with the majority of the US workforce, 60% according to a 2023 Mckinsey & Company report, experiencing burnout. Symptoms of burnout range from headaches, fatigue, frequent illness, to a sense of failure or self-doubt, decreased satisfaction, loss of motivation and increased substance use.

Gen Z workers, employees from smaller companies, and individual contributors, i.e., workers who are non-managers – combined, forming a prominent demographic – report the highest burnout symptoms.

The same Mckinsey & Company report notes, “…burnout is only the starting point: employers have a critical role to play in addressing a range of negative (mental) health outcomes at work beyond burnout.”

Despite this call for change, we’re far from feeling better.

Dr. Nicole DeKay, an I-O psychologist, says, “mental health has continued to decline after COVID ended. Even though many CEOs want to pretend we can go back to the way things were, it’s just not happening for the rest of us. We all lived through a collective trauma and it fundamentally rewired a lot of our nervous systems. Minimizing or ignoring that we were all traumatized recently only makes the trauma worse.”

Leading contributors to declining mental health are toxic workplace behaviors, alongside a cultural shift in employee expectations.

Evelyn Shapiro, an Organizational Development and Labor Leader notes, “There’s a shift needed at all levels of leadership. Employees are expected to check their humanity at the door, but that’s no longer acceptable.”

“People want to be treated with dignity, and when they aren’t, they’ll leave—only to return out of financial necessity. Respect is non-negotiable, and people are willing to leave high-paying jobs if they’re treated poorly. It’s not just about wages; it’s about valuing employees as humans. When respect is missing, turnover follows, no matter how good the pay,” says Shapiro.

Disability Justice

Employees with disabilities have long faced barriers to accessing employment opportunities, and the tide is turning as millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha push to make workplaces more inclusive.

Executive Director of Disability Culture Lab, Meier Galblum Haigh says, “Abusive workplaces put exponential profits before people, and once disabled we lose access to work that allows us to put food on the table and a place to live.

2025 is the year where more workers start telling the stories of how disabling work can be, and how important organizing is to ensure we have safeguards from greedy corporations who simply won’t protect us. We saw it spark nationwide in 2024 – labor organizers telling the stories of why there is a need for a greater safety net — and in this coming year will explode under a new administration that we know plans to attack disabled people from the start.”

Accessibility in digital tools, flexible working arrangements, and inclusive leadership programs play an important role, however disability justice is not simply about accommodating the needs of individual workers – it’s about addressing organizational barriers to thriving.

Generational Divides

The workforce of 2025 will be more age-diverse than ever before, forcing a need to bridge real and imagined generational divides at work.

“Generational differences influence workplace dynamics in meaningful ways”, says Talent Management consultant Dr. Nadia Butt.

“For instance, when it comes to communication, baby boomers often value face-to-face interactions, while millennials and GenZ prefer digital modes of communication. These differences can and do create friction, such as misaligned expectations around meeting formats or work-life priorities.”

The responsibility lies with leaders to build an organizational culture that values all employees, instead of laying the blame with younger generations.

Former HR and DEI leader at SmartSheet, Amelia Ransom says, “We often conflate generational issues with situational ones. Every generation faces challenges, but the way we react to them depends on the context. What we see as weaknesses today—like trigger warnings—might just be things we’ve always felt but never named.

The idea that younger workers are entitled or lazy is a tired trope. Every generation has gone through the same struggles; the difference now is that we’re allowed to question and negotiate. What we used to tolerate, we no longer accept.”

One way to move forward is seeing generational differences as an opportunity to innovate, not a challenge to fix. Leadership Expert Jacqueline Twillie highlights, “Each generation brings something unique—wisdom, fresh perspectives, resilience, and new ideas.”

Her advice to leaders – “Don’t just manage these differences; build bridges by being curious and creating space for real conversations. When you foster mutual respect and align everyone around shared values, those divides can become a powerful source of collaboration and growth. The question isn’t, ‘How do I fix this?’—it’s, ‘How can I make sure every voice feels heard and empowered to contribute?’”

4. Class Solidarity

Class solidarity is no longer just an ideal—it’s a driving force reshaping labor dynamics. A surge in union organizing and mainstream publications such as Teen Vogue advocating class solidarity has created class consciousness with a new generation of workers.

Dr. DeKay notes, “We’re seeing a systematic attack on labor by US based companies known for abusing workers through our legal system. Amazon and SpaceX filed scarily similar lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board in November of 2024. That combined with the dismantling of the Chevron Doctrine last year by the Supreme Court strips the EEOC and OFCCP of its power. These cases will likely go to the Supreme Court so it feels like a concerted attack against the rights of labor.”

In the face of these monumental challenges, Aaron Delgaty, Anthropologist of Work at The Starr Conspiracy says, “more and more workers are going to realize that they have each other, and that their fellow workers are likely their most accessible vehicle for change.”

Workers are increasingly realizing that their collective power is essential for negotiating better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Delgaty adds, “How can an employer reasonably say in one breath that they value employee mental health, and then in the next discourage employees from organizing to advocate for their collective rights, interests, and well-being? An environment that divides workers either by intent or by accident grinds away at individuals and ultimately undermines the whole organization. Employers bemoan recruiting and retention challenges, but don’t recognize the connection between burnout and alienating work places.”

While employers are reluctant to see the connections, workers increasingly are, with relationships strengthened by social media platforms such as Reddit, Blind, Threads, and more.

5. Labor Organizing

Labor organizing is experiencing a resurgence – both in increased union membership and acceptance among the general public.

Already, 67% of U.S. workers now say they strongly support the idea of unions and 59% support unionization in their own workplace, a significant increase from the prior high of 39% in 2017 and 2018 according to the Economic Policy Institute.

In 2024, the Democratic National Convention featured United Auto Workers union president Shawn Fain and reporter John Russell from a More Perfect Union, along with a surge of high-profile union wins in the past years have firmly put labor organizing on the map (again).

In the past week, we’ve seen nurses union at all Providence hospitals in Oregon along physicians and advanced practitioners go on strike, ski patrollers in Colorado strike (and win), and others begin organizing for action in the coming year.

Blue collar and hourly workers are not the only demographics seeing a rise in organizing. Over the past five years, there have been multiple efforts to unionize tech workers.

Tesla and Google have both made headlines recently for thwarting efforts, with the former firing dozens of software workers from its Autopilot division days after their unionization campaign launched, and the latter for laying off a group of subcontractors at YouTube Music after they unionized.

Still, workers at Google’s Pittsburgh contractor HCL unionized in 2021, the Bethesda Game Studios workers voted to join the Communications Workers of America union, and Code for America reached a collective bargaining agreement with its union, CfA Workers United in 2023. The numbers in these early examples may be small, but as labor unions continue to expand their reach into previously unorganized sectors, expect to see a greater emphasis on fair pay, better working conditions, and broader social benefits for workers.

The role of technology in organizing will also continue to grow; labor organizing has evolved to meet the needs of a digitally connected workforce with platforms like TikTok and Discord being used to organize and advocate for workers in real-time.

The workforce of 2025 is being shaped by a convergence of factors: the rise of class solidarity, the resurgence of labor organizing, a focus on disability justice, the need for bridging generational gaps, and a growing emphasis on mental health. For businesses to thrive in 2025, they will need to embrace these trends and create environments where workers are empowered, supported, and valued. The future of work is not just about technological advancements—it’s about the people behind those advancements, and ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to succeed.