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Zorro

(18,956 posts)
Sun May 31, 2026, 10:35 PM Sunday

No Raise, No Promotion: 1 in 4 White-Collar Workers Are Stalling Out [View all]

No promotion. No notable raises. Not yet 40. You aren’t alone.

Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers before their so-called peak earning years, going at least five years without a real boost in pay or position.

That’s the central finding of a new study tracking the careers of 1.3 million midcareer professionals across a range of industries since 2000. It suggests that even in an economy with high employment, many workers run into an invisible barrier to upward mobility just when their careers are supposed to gain momentum.

Midcareer stalls often start as early-career slumps and can ripple across a lifetime of earnings, the analysis found. That makes those first working years after college especially critical for gaining the experience and skills that propel a career forward.

“When you’re talking about a quarter of the workforce, you’re not talking about a niche problem,” said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, which conducted the study with New York University’s School of Professional Studies.

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/white-collar-workers-career-nyu-study-a81a7d9c?st=PwVP73&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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