Forget the Ladder: Workers Are Collecting Transferable Skills

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The career ladder is starting to look more like a climbing wall. In a global study of 19,506 desk-based workers across 15 countries, 59% said they prioritize transferable skills over climbing a traditional career ladder, and more than half agreed that career paths are becoming less linear in the AI era.

The survey, fielded between mid-April and late May 2026, covered more than 15,000 knowledge workers along with IT decision makers and business leaders. It is the fourth annual edition of an index measuring how people feel about their relationship with work.

Career insurance on the side

One of the more striking numbers concerns life outside the day job. Thirty-six percent of workers have an income-generating side venture, and among Gen Z the figure rises to 48%. The study describes these projects as "career insurance," a hedge for a world in which roles keep shifting. Nearly half of the youngest workers, it seems, are not putting all their eggs in one org chart.

Uncertainty about roles is part of the picture. Workers who use AI agents are more likely than those who use only generative AI to expect their role to become harder to define (47% versus 39%). They are also more likely to worry about being replaced by AI or by colleagues with AI expertise (44% versus 37%), which the study reads as a sharper awareness of the need for adaptability and continuous learning.

Growth keeps people

For employers, the message is about development. Seventy-three percent of knowledge workers say they would be more likely to stay at a company that actively invests in their growth. Workforce development ranks as the third-strongest driver of a healthy relationship with work, behind leadership confidence, and tools that help people build new skills appear among the top enablers of good work. For individual professionals, the findings suggest a simple portfolio approach to a career: keep collecting skills that travel well between roles and industries, and pay attention to which employers actually make room for that growth. The ladder may still exist, but more people now want options for when a rung goes missing.