Career Navigation Technology That Workers and Our Economy Need

What we do for a living shapes our lives—our very identities—in profound ways. Work is the foundation of our financial security, directly impacting the opportunities we have access to and the lives we lead. Yet, our reality of pursuing one continuous, stable, and predictable career has changed forever.

The economic crisis of 2020 revealed that workers need to follow career paths more defined by variety and near-constant change than consistency. Building a stable, sustainable working life across the many jobs and industries that make up a contemporary career requires a new set of skills: adaptability, resilience, self-reflection, and self-directed lifelong learning.

Today, workers need a streamlined, personalized picture of advancement opportunities—one that identifies transferable skills and includes access to mentors and other networks, along with many other supports that enable jobseekers to succeed as they navigate today’s labor market.

Career Navigation Technology 2020, our new market scan funded by Walmart Foundation and sponsored by Tyton Partners, focuses on the millions of workers too often overlooked or underserved by traditional approaches to career navigation. Framing career navigation as a lifelong process that involves workers, employers, and other entities, such as schools and workforce boards, we delve into the dynamics shaping the career navigation technology market, identifying innovations, trends, and areas of opportunity.

In the scan, we reveal that this moment—and this market—is ready for a new generation of career navigation tools to help tens of millions of people find new careers and meaningful and economically transformative work, at scale.

Clare Betrand, Director of JFFLabs, drills down to the essence of why this is so important:

Learn more about how, for the first time, advances in technology have the potential to offer all workers meaningful, robust, and personalized support—while we celebrate the companies that are leading the way. View the full scan on JFF.org today at JFF.org/careernavtech.