Technology, change, and uncertainty: maintaining career confidence in the early 21st century

Over the coming decades, technology and automation are expected to dramatically transform how work will be undertaken. While many of these developments will improve productivity and provide new opportunities, some jobs will likely disappear. In this article, we report data from in-depth interviews undertaken with 51 young Australians about their strategies for managing the possibility of technological disruption in the workplace. In the face of future uncertainties, we found that the majority of our participants remained confident in their ability to maintain for themselves a 'good' career story. We posit, however, that those who could neither avoid nor reduce the possibility that technological advancements might jeopardise their career plans demonstrated an outlook of career malleability whereby they accepted the risk yet remained subjectively confident in their own capacity to rewrite their career narrative if, or when, circumstances demanded.