Why Transition Infrastructure Is Key to Future Work

Our Institutions Were Built for a Different Economy

The systems we rely on to prepare people for work were designed for an economic era that no longer exists. Twentieth-century education, workforce development, and employer institutions were created with a single goal in mind: helping people land a job. The underlying assumption was that once someone found employment, they would remain with that organization for the long haul, experiencing few significant career interruptions along the way.

This model never applied uniformly. The length of time a person stayed with one employer varied considerably based on factors like race, gender, class, occupation, industry, and union membership. Yet regardless of these differences, the fundamental architecture of our institutions was not built to accommodate workers who move frequently between jobs, shift across occupations, or return to learning at multiple points in their careers.

The economic shifts of recent decades have only widened the gap between what our institutions offer and what workers actually need. Corporate restructuring, the rise of outsourcing, and the steady decline of traditional pensions have all contributed to a landscape where employers are both less able and less willing to offer younger generations the kind of long-term, single-organization careers that previous generations may have taken for granted.

As a result, the career trajectory has fundamentally changed. Moving between employers has increasingly become the most reliable path to a higher salary and career advancement. Staying put, once a sign of loyalty and stability, can now mean falling behind financially. This new reality places a premium on adaptability, continuous skill development, and the ability to navigate a labor market that rewards mobility over tenure.

The challenge, then, is not simply that our institutions are outdated. It is that they were built on a premise that no longer holds true. The expectation of a linear career path from education to employment to retirement has given way to a more dynamic and unpredictable journey. Workers today must be prepared to pivot, retrain, and transition multiple times over the course of a working life that may span four decades or more.

This is why the concept of transition infrastructure is so critical. It is not merely a stopgap measure for those experiencing long-term unemployment. Rather, it represents a fundamental rethinking of how we support people at every stage of their working lives, recognizing that the ability to successfully navigate change is now a core skill in itself, and that the systems designed to support workers must evolve to match the realities of a 21st-century economy.

The Economy Changed. The Infrastructure Didn’t

The employment model of the 20th century was built on the expectation of a stable, long-term bond between employer and worker. That era has given way to a new reality where companies continuously adjust their capability requirements to stay in step with advances in AI, automation, and rapid technological change.

As a result, employers now anticipate significant shifts in the skills their workforce needs. According to the World Economic Forum, 39% of workers’ current skill sets will be transformed or become obsolete by 2030. Meanwhile, individuals must be ready to navigate repeated transitions over longer, more dynamic careers. These shifts can happen within a single job, inside one organization, or across different employers. Each of these changes makes robust transition infrastructure more essential than ever.

Our current education-to-work system still concentrates learning at the beginning of working life, even though workers increasingly need lifelong learning to build new capabilities throughout their careers. Yet continuous learning alone does not guarantee mobility. Workers also need access to infrastructure that links their learning and demonstrated skills to real, available employment opportunities.

What 21st-Century Transition Infrastructure Looks Like

Modern transition infrastructure should bridge learning and work in a way that lets people earn income, gain experience, prove new capabilities, and move efficiently toward their next opportunity. It must recognize that career transitions will become a regular, recurring part of professional life.

Too often, our education-to-career system treats learning, credentialing, and employment as separate, sequential stages rather than overlapping activities. In today’s labor market, where employer demand for skills shifts constantly, this rigid separation no longer matches the way work actually happens.

Increasingly, workers will need opportunities to develop the skills and capabilities required for their next role while still performing in their current one. They may not meet every requirement of a new position on day one. Like apprentices, they should be supported in acquiring the necessary skills and capabilities through hands-on, on-the-job experience.

Workers should not have to act as the sole architects of their own career transitions. While they are learning new skills to move into their next role, they should also have access to income, career navigation and counseling support, internal talent marketplaces, and genuine work opportunities.

It’s time to build the infrastructure that helps people repeatedly convert their skills and capabilities into economic opportunity across their entire careers. We already know how to build parts of it. Its principles are visible in paid internships, apprenticeships, and internal talent marketplaces. The challenge is that we have not applied these models’ underlying principles broadly enough to support workers through transitions at every stage of their professional lives.

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