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Every year, workplace trend reports arrive with bold predictions about what’s ahead for workers and employers. Most simply make their forecasts, but job search and career community company Glassdoor has gone back to revisit their predictions for a mid-year review.
While the findings are based largely on U.S. labour market data and Glassdoor reviews from U.S. workers, many of the themes, including anxiety around artificial intelligence, leadership distrust and ongoing hiring uncertainty are also playing out in Canada.
One prediction Glassdoor says has proven accurate is that workplace anxiety would remain elevated. Rather than seeing another wave of mass layoffs, the company predicted workers would experience what it called “forever layoffs” – a steady stream of smaller job cuts that would keep workers operating in a low level of uncertainty.
That’s largely what has happened. While overall layoffs remain close to pre-pandemic levels, with 1.69 million workers laid off or discharged in April compared with a pre-pandemic average of 1.81 million, employee anxiety continues to rise. Mentions of job insecurity in Glassdoor reviews climbed 63 per cent year over year, while mentions of layoffs increased 29 per cent.
Another trend the company got right was deteriorating trust between employees and leadership. Glassdoor expected economic uncertainty, restructuring and unpopular workplace decisions to widen the gap between executives and employees. The average senior leadership ratings fell below 3.5 out of five in April, the lowest monthly score since 2017.
Employees are also increasingly using words such as “misalignment,” up 95 per cent from last year, “disconnect,” up 52 per cent, and “distrust,” up 18 per cent, when describing leadership in company reviews.
The report also predicted that return-to-office policies would continue reshaping work. That has largely played out, although not exactly as many expected. Hybrid work continues to grow while fully remote work slowly declines.
One shift to note is how remote employees now report the weakest workplace experience across the board. Glassdoor found remote workers gave career opportunities an average rating of 3.16 out of five, compared with 3.35 for hybrid workers and 3.67 for employees working primarily in person. Remote employees also reported the weakest work-life balance, suggesting the flexibility of working from home is increasingly coming with trade-offs.
Where Glassdoor admits it missed the mark is artificial intelligence. At the beginning of the year, the company expected AI would remain more of a background issue for most employees. Instead, discussions about AI have surged. Mentions of AI in employee reviews have more than tripled over the past year and have become net negative for the first time, showing growing concern about how the technology will reshape jobs, workloads and long-term career prospects.
Glassdoor also expected the market would be challenging for job seekers, and the data suggests that prediction has held true. The company’s interview data shows job seekers are turning down fewer offers than they were a year ago. In the first four months of 2026, the job offer decline rate fell to 21.4 per cent, down 5.1 percentage points from the same period in 2025. After adjusting for seasonal hiring patterns, the rate was even lower at 19.6 per cent, suggesting more workers are prioritizing stability over finding the perfect fit.
Glassdoor’s outlook for new graduates has not held up as well. The company had predicted early-career workers would continue regaining purchasing power after earnings recovered to 2020 levels in 2025. Instead, inflation has picked up again, pushing the bar higher for wage growth and early-career pay has not kept pace. The challenge, however, remains landing that first job in an increasingly competitive hiring market.
Fast fact
Risky business
18 per cent
That’s the layoff risk faced by technology workers who used artificial intelligence less than once a month, according to new research from global analytics and advisory firm Gallup. By comparison, workers who used AI at least monthly faced only a 6 per cent risk of being laid off.
Career guidance
Ruler breaker
What do you do when workers keep breaking the rules on the job, and you’re the one in charge?
According to this Harvard Business Review article, leaders should resist the urge to jump to conclusions. Rule breaking that appears harmful at first glance may stem from good intentions or from policies that aren’t working as intended. Taking the time to understand why employees are violating the rules can help address the underlying problem instead of simply responding to the behaviour itself.
Quoted
Social reset
“Social media can make you smile. You don’t have to be addicted to it. We think we built something that people will want to stay because it feels right, not because they can’t leave,” says Ben Waldman, co-founder and chief executive of the new Canadian social media platform Gander.
The platform, which launched on Canada Day, promises data sovereignty and the option for users to tailor the content to what they most enjoy.
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On our radar
Hiring hope
Recent data from Statistics Canada shows that job vacancies rose in the first quarter of 2026, increasing by 2.4 per cent from the previous quarter. It marks the first increase in available jobs since the second quarter of 2022, with gains across full-time, part-time, permanent and temporary positions.