 Issue #164 · September 28, 2026 Is There Still Job Security?Job security is a myth. Here’s what replaces it. |
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✍️ From Jodi · The Job Market Is There Still Job Security?There’s no such thing as a safe employer anymore. Here’s what takes its place. I don’t usually write essays straight out of our Women’s Health Mini-MBA class, but this week’s session stood out. We were working through a case study on failed companies in women’s health. In the middle of the unit economics and the balance sheet conversation of one of them, one of our Mini-MBA participants asked a great question: When you’re looking at jobs at these companies, how do you balance risk and reward, knowing there’s a real chance they could fail? She was honest about it. How does she walk away from an established, “safe” company for one that might not make it? Following her passion feels scary. Here’s what Rachel Braun Scherl and I told her: We want you to get the idea of job security out of your mind. It does not exist anymore. The Safe Choice Isn’t SafeYou can be fired from a large corporate organization just as fast as a startup can fail. People we know personally went to multiple well-funded women’s health companies, some taking pay cuts for the upside. They were later-stage. They were supposed to be de-risked. They weren’t. The people at “safe” big companies aren’t any safer. One participant told us her best friend is at Adobe, where a new CEO is coming in and layoffs are treated as a given. Another put it simply after leaving her employer of 12 years: the risk is always there, everywhere. A seemingly low-risk company can make cuts whenever it decides to. Rachel Braun Scherl, who teaches the Mini-MBA with me, framed it in one generation: “My father graduated from business school and had mandatory retirement from the same company he started at. Fifty years later, my daughter has had five jobs since college, and she’s not alone. The entire employment structure is different, and there is no such thing as job security. You went to an IBM, a J&J, a General Motors, and if you were loyal to them, they were loyal to you. That world is gone.” Even the most credentialed path proves the point. Our guest speaker this week was an OBGYN. You’d think a physician has job security, and in many ways she did, until life happened and she had to reevaluate her entire career without warning. No title protects you from that. And the class agreed. The chat filled up with variations of the same conclusion: “True job security is a myth.” “Unfortunately there’s no such thing as job security anymore. Startup or tenured company.” What the Data SaysThe data backs up what the room was already reflecting. In a July 2026 survey of 1,000 laid-off U.S. workers, 86% said the experience changed how they view job security and employer loyalty, 53% believe AI or automation played a role in their layoff, and 40% now plan to keep watching the market even while employed. Forty percent are considering switching fields entirely, and 26% are thinking about starting a business. Gallup’s recent data adds a sharper edge: laid-off workers were disproportionately people who rarely used AI, and in tech, infrequent AI users were roughly three times more likely to have been laid off than regular users. So if job security is dead, what replaces it? Here’s my take. Job security today means you trust yourself. It means you are building the skills to survive on your own from an employment standpoint, no matter what any single employer decides. As I told the class: the only job security you have is your brand, your profile, the work you’ve done, and how you’re putting that out into the world. That’s what you carry with you.
How to Build It YourselfPractically, that looks like this: → Understand the business, not just the mission. Before you join any women’s health company, ask who actually delivers the care, how they handle licensing and malpractice at scale, what the care model looks like at 10x, and where revenue really comes from. If you can read unit economics, you can see risk coming before it reaches your desk. → Learn AI by building with it. Not a certificate, not a webinar. Use it on real work until it changes how you work. The gap between people who use these tools daily and people who don’t is already showing up in who gets cut. It’s certainly the first question I’m asking and skill I’m looking for when I’m hiring these days. → Build your audience before you need it. Post what you’re learning. Share your point of view on the industry. Your visible body of work is the résumé that can’t be taken away in a reorg. It’s also something for you to leverage in an interview and new role. → Invest in relationships. Our guest made the point that the real trade-off of startup life is the people, and big companies reorg just as fast. The people you’ve worked with, helped, and stayed in touch with are the network that catches you. → Be a little selfish. One of our alums said it perfectly: evaluate the risks you’re willing to take and what they mean for your career aspirations. Take the safe role if you need to make ends meet, and keep looking for the one that compounds your experience. Another added the unglamorous pro move: negotiate severance up front for risky roles. → Know your whole-life math. Insurance, monthly costs, flexibility, caregiving. A risky job with a plan is a calculated bet. A risky job without one is just risk. The Women’s Health AngleOne more thing, because this is a women’s health newsletter. A participant pointed out that job security declines further for women over 40, and that everything above is one more argument for a stronger health insurance safety net that isn’t welded to a single employer. She’s connected the need in the system to the macro-level changes in the environment. I’d argue that it’s another reason why we are seeing more and more women start their own businesses, believe in themselves and control their own destiny over 40. Unfortunately, the days of “job security” like our parents had are gone. We as a generation have to grieve that in some ways. But what I think is replacing it is a lot stronger. The new version of job security is the kind you build in yourself, travels with you into every interview, every pivot, and every downturn. And the best thing is that nobody can lay you off from it. I’m curious: what does job security mean to you now? Has your definition changed in the last few years? I loved having this discussion in class and I’d love to hear from you. I read every response and I’d love to see what the larger consensus is. Cheers,  P.S. This is exactly the kind of conversation we have every month at our free Women’s Health Career Networking sessions, and every week inside the Mini-MBA and Mastermind. If you’re trying to build this kind of security in women’s health, come join us. Check our Luma Calendar for more details.
Sources: Resume Genius 2026 AI Layoffs Report (Pollfish survey, July 2026, n=1,000); Gallup data on AI use and layoffs via Fox Business; Forbes: What Does Job Security Even Look Like in 2026? |
💡 The Reimbursement Summit is coming back. Be the first to know. Most people in women’s health know reimbursement matters. Almost none of them understand how it actually works. This three-day program changes that.Reimbursement decides what care scales and what quietly disappears, and most people in this industry were never taught how it works. This three-day virtual program covers the mechanics: CPT codes, coverage decisions, payer negotiations, and the structural gaps specific to women’s health. New dates and speakers are being finalized now, and payment plans will be available when registration opens.
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⭐ Featured Roles Three we'd apply to this week
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🎯 Career Move · Before you sign
That is the part nobody negotiates for, because asking about the downside feels like doubting the upside. It isn’t. In women’s health especially, where plenty of companies are pre-revenue or one payer contract away from a very different year, the questions below are the ones that tell you what you’re actually walking into. Ask them in a final round, when you have leverage, and you’ll learn more about the company than any careers page will tell you.
None of this is pessimism. It is the same unit-economics read from the essay above, pointed at your own career. Source: Resume Genius 2026 AI Layoffs Report 🤝 In the Community
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📅 Upcoming Events Get in the room
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P.P.S. Job security may be a myth, but a good network has never once been laid off. Hit reply and tell me which founder, operator, or industry leader in women’s health more people should know about (yes, you can nominate yourself, humility is not a retention strategy). |
