Christopher Harris, a business expert at Calculating.com, says hiring teams are paying more attention to patterns, not just titles or speed of movement. 

In the recent dynamic labour market, he says, certain career choices now point to fear rather than direction.

Speaking with recruiters while reviewing Harris’ comments, the perspectives aligned. Just movement can’t impress them anymore. What is important is whether a person appears settled, clear, and deliberate.

Below are six career moves Harris says now raise doubts instead of confidence. The reality is already seen in hiring sessions.

Six career moves recruiters now question

1. Changing jobs every few months
   Short stints used to pass as ambition. Now they usually trigger concerns about what will happen if they take you in. Recruiters want evidence of follow-through, not constant exits.

Harris says, “When I see someone with four jobs in two years, I don’t think ‘ambitious’, I think ‘what’s going wrong?’”

2. Jumping across unrelated roles without explanation

Switching careers is not the issue. Silence is. When a CV jumps from one field to another with no clear link, recruiters assume guesswork, not planning.

“Career pivots work when you can articulate the thread that connects them,” Harris explained.

3. Stacking certificates with no proof of use
   Courses and credentials are still important, but only when applied. Multiple certifications earned in quick succession, with no real-world use, now suggest insecurity.

“That comes across as someone trying to make themselves feel more secure by ticking boxes.”

4. Chasing titles instead of responsibility
   A bigger title without broader work no longer grabs attention. Recruiters look at scope, not labels. Repeated senior titles with shrinking duties raise doubts.

In Harris’s words: “If you’ve been a ‘Senior Manager’ at three different companies in 18 months but the scope kept shrinking, that’s ego management, not progression.”

5. Always signalling availability
   Being permanently “open to work” can work against candidates. Recruiters read it as a lack of focus or selectivity.

Harris says that constant availability can actually work against you.

6. Leaving roles badly and making it public
   Public criticism of former employers or dramatic exits is now seen as poor judgment. Recruiters assume the behaviour will repeat.

“All it really shows is poor emotional regulation and an inability to navigate difficult situations professionally.”

What recruiters are actually looking for

Harris says the key test is coherence. Can a candidate explain their choices without sounding defensive or rushed?

He adds: “What recruiters and hiring managers are looking for in 2026 isn’t constant motion. It’s coherence.”

The advice is to slow down, make fewer moves, and be clear about why you made them.

“Movement without direction just looks like panic.”

What makes it more interesting is what was happening at the same time, hiring slowed, payroll jobs became harder to find, and firms across sectors worked intentionally to stay small.

This initially looks contradictory; if firms are shrinking and employment is weak, why does output not seem to be collapsing with it? That issue sits in the middle of today’s labour and productivity debate.

I think we are watching a gradual structural transition in how economic activity is organised.

For decades, growth was similar, as firms expanded by hiring, productivity came from scale, specialisation, and large teams, and employment was the channel through which most people participated in growth.

That logic no longer holds as well as it once did.

Skills Inflation: When Everyone Learns the Same Thing

Across advanced economies, companies are being careful, with payroll employment in the UK falling over the past year, while unemployment has drifted higher. Wage growth has cooled, but business activity has not frozen. Instead, work has been reorganised.

Rather than adding staff, firms rely more on external workers such as consultants, freelancers, sole traders, and contractors. Many of these workers are, in effect, one-person firms. They sell skills and output, not labour hours within a hierarchy.

This is important because it changes what a “firm” looks like.

Self-employment is not new, but what is different now is its role. In the UK, there are roughly 4.3 million self-employed people, about one in eight workers. A large share are highly skilled professionals providing services that would once have sat inside organisations. They include design, legal work, finance, software, media, and strategy.

These individuals are not peripheral but sit inside supply chains, even if they are not on payrolls. Output still happens. It is simply produced differently.

When people talk about the “solo enterprise”, they usually imagine lifestyle businesses. That misses the point. Many of these one-person firms exist because companies have chosen not to hire, not because demand has vanished.

This is where productivity becomes harder to read.

Traditional productivity statistics focus on output per worker within firms. But what happens when output is produced by networks of external workers rather than employees? What happens when a single individual coordinates tools, platforms and outsourced labour to provide results that once required a team?

At the level of the individual, productivity can look high. At the level of national statistics, it can disappear.

This helps explain why we see a gap between lived experience and macro data. People sense that work is intense, output is high, and expectations have risen, but measured productivity growth is still weak. Part of the answer lies in mismeasurement, rather than mysticism.

There is also a labour market aspect here, and it is not uniformly positive.

For some, solo enterprise is a choice. It provides autonomy, flexibility and, in the upper tail, high income. In the US, the number of independent professionals earning high six-figure incomes has increased over recent years.

For others, it is a response to limitation. When firms stop hiring, people do not stop working. They repackage themselves. Income becomes volatile. Security weakens. Benefits disappear.

The same structure that allows output to continue without headcount also takes the risk away from firms and onto individuals.

This redistribution of risk is easy to miss if we focus only on aggregate numbers. GDP does not tell us how predictable income is. Employment rates do not tell us how many people are stitching together work from multiple sources.

From a macro perspective, this creates awkward questions. Tax systems are still built around payroll work. Social protection still assumes stable employment. Labour statistics still find it hard to capture independent and project-based work accurately. 

Even the UK’s statistical authorities have acknowledged stubborn problems in labour market measurement, with fixes not expected until late 2026.

We are trying to measure a changing economy with tools designed for an older one.

So are we entering a period where companies shrink while output grows?

In parts of the economy, yes. Especially in services, knowledge work and digital production, output is no longer tightly linked to headcount. Scale has become lighter, coordination has become cheaper, and firms optimise for flexibility, rather than size.

But this is not a free lunch. Growth without hiring affects who bears risk, how income is distributed and how work is experienced. It also forces policymakers to confront the situation where employment is no more the sole or even primary channel through which economic value is created.

The issue of the solo enterprise is not a trend to celebrate or dismiss. The structure of work is changing, and our economic language is finding it difficult to keep up.

This revealed a marginal increase of 0.1% points compared to the same period last year.

The latest data, derived from the Nigeria Labour Force Survey (NLFS), revealed contrasting trends in unemployment across demographics, regions, and educational backgrounds. 

Men recorded a lower unemployment rate of 3.4%, while women faced a higher rate of 5.1%, disclosing gender disparities in job accessibility.

Urban centres were hit harder than rural areas, with unemployment in cities rising to 5.2% compared to a much lower 2.8% in rural regions. 

These differences point to the role of agriculture and informal sectors in rural employment, while urban areas continue to struggle with higher reliance on formal job markets.

Youth unemployment, specifically among individuals aged 15 to 24, showed improvement, dropping to 6.5% from 8.4% in the first quarter of 2024. This decline implies some success in initiatives aimed at addressing youth joblessness, although challenges remain in sustaining this progress.

Education and Employment Trends

Nigeria’s unemployment rate also varied significantly by educational attainment. Individuals with upper secondary education faced the highest unemployment at 8.5%, followed by those with lower secondary education at 5.8%. 

Surprisingly, those with only primary education recorded the lowest unemployment rate at 2.8%, suggesting that skill mismatches in the job market might be a factor.

On the other hand, those with post-secondary education fared better, with a comparatively lower unemployment rate of 4.8%. This trend reinforces the importance of tailoring education to meet labour market demands.

Labour Market Dynamics

The labour force participation rate—a measure of the working-age population actively engaged in the labour market—rose to 79.5% in Q2 2024. 

Rural areas led this metric with an 83.2% participation rate, compared to 77.2% in urban areas. Gender disparities were minimal, with male participation at 79.9% and female participation at 79.1%.

The employment-to-population ratio also saw an increase, climbing to 76.1% from 73.1% in Q1 2024. Rural areas again outperformed urban centres in this metric, with employment rates of 80.8% and 73.2%, respectively.

Self-Employment Remains Dominant

Self-employment accounted for an overwhelming 85.6% of total employment, up from 84% in Q1 2023 — informal work in Nigeria’s economy tops. 

The rural self-employment rate stood at 94.3%, compared to 79.7% in urban areas. Women were more likely to be self-employed, with a rate of 88.3% compared to 82.2% for men.

Meanwhile, the share of employees in the labour force declined to 14.4%, emphasising the limited availability of formal employment opportunities.

While the slight increase in unemployment is a challenge, improvements in youth employment and labour force participation provide a silver lining. 

However, the continuous gender gap and urban-rural disparities call for targeted interventions to create a more equitable labour market. 

The reign of self-employment and informal work points to the urgent need to expand formal job opportunities to stabilise Nigeria’s workforce and drive sustainable economic growth.

Also, ensuring education and training align with market needs will be necessary in tackling unemployment and enabling long-term progress.