Career coaching isn’t exploding.
It’s sorting.

Low barriers to entry.
Steady demand.
Very uneven outcomes.

Some people are thriving.
Many are working harder than ever and going nowhere.

This isn’t hype or collapse—it’s a market maturing in real time.

I break down what’s actually happening, who it works for, and why most people misunderstand the opportunity.

👇 Read on.

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The HR Blotter

Work Won’t Wake Up Until Mid-Year - JPMorgan’s latest labor outlook warns that the U.S. job market is set to sputter through the first half of 2026, with hiring barely moving and unemployment climbing toward 4.5% as employers sit on the sidelines amid economic uncertainty and tighter labor supply. AI spending and policy shifts haven’t translated into meaningful job creation, leaving work-world confidence shaky, though a rebound is possible in the back half of the year if tariffs, tax cuts, and rate moves kick in. This paints a picture of work becoming harder to find and slower to materialize before any recovery arrives.

Jobs Are Posted. Hiring Is Not - BBC News reports that employers are quietly pulling back on hiring as economic uncertainty drags on, leaving workers stuck in longer job searches and fewer real opportunities behind posted openings. Businesses are signaling caution by freezing roles, delaying backfills, and squeezing more output from existing staff instead of adding headcount. In the world of work, this means a job market that looks active on the surface but feels stalled for anyone actually trying to move.

The Scam Economy Is Hiring - Rest of World reports that job scams on LinkedIn are surging, with fake recruiters and phony roles targeting workers already under pressure to find their next paycheck. Scammers are exploiting trust in familiar platforms, stealing personal data, money, and time while hiding behind polished profiles and AI-generated messages. In the world of work, this turns job hunting into a risk management exercise, where desperation and weak verification collide.

Learn AI or Get Left Behind - Fortune reports that Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan is urging Gen Z to stop fearing AI and start learning how to work with it if they want to stay employable. His message is blunt: AI is not optional, and the people who understand it will pull ahead while others fall behind. In the world of work, this reframes early-career success as less about pedigree and more about adaptability in an AI-saturated workplace.

Hiring Is Still a Grind - SHRM’s 2025 Talent Trends makes it clear that hiring is still a mess and HR is paying the price. Roles stay open, skills keep shifting, and employers are leaning on internal mobility and AI not out of innovation but out of necessity. In the world of work, this is what coping looks like when the old recruiting playbook no longer works.

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The Jim Stroud Podcast

Not subscribed to The Jim Stroud Podcast? Then you’ve been flying blind. Here’s a taste of what they’ve been hearing—while you’ve been missing it.

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Everyone Wants to Be a Career Coach—Here’s Why That’s a Problem

“Career coaching is booming.”

You hear it everywhere.
LinkedIn. Podcasts. Webinars. Sales pages with Stripe screenshots and suspiciously cheerful testimonials.

And depending on how generously you interpret the data, that statement is both true and misleading at the same time.

What looks like a boom is actually something more interesting—and more uncomfortable: a market quietly sorting itself into layers. Some parts are accelerating fast. Others are growing at the pace you’d expect from a mature professional service.

That distinction matters. Especially if you’re trying to build something that lasts.

So let’s drop the marketing copy and talk about what’s actually happening.

The Growth That Isn’t Quite a Boom

Career coaching doesn’t have a clean industry label, so it usually gets lumped into “Job Training & Career Counseling.”

That U.S. market sits at roughly $17 billion and has been growing at low single-digit rates.

That’s real growth.
It’s healthy.
It’s also not a gold rush.

Global data tells the same story. Revenue is rising steadily—but the number of coaches is rising much faster. Read that again. The market is growing, but supply is growing faster than demand.

Which immediately raises a question.

If the core market isn’t exploding…
why does everything feel like a boom?

Where the “Boom” Story Actually Comes From

The boom isn’t in the middle.
It’s on the edges.

Online platforms. Digital programs. AI-enabled career tools. Scalable, productized offerings.

Those segments are growing at double-digit rates. And career coaching happens to be one of the biggest categories inside them.

So when fast-moving digital edges get blended together with slower, traditional one-to-one coaching, the whole category gets stamped with a single word:

Booming.

That’s the distortion.

What’s driving this isn’t hype. It’s structural change.

Careers don’t move in straight lines anymore. Skills expire faster. Titles don’t translate cleanly. AI keeps rewriting what “qualified” even means.

Layoffs didn’t create this career coaching market.
They activated it.

Which brings us to the question most people avoid asking.

If Demand Is Real… Who’s Actually Paying?

Because this is where a lot of coaching businesses quietly break.

They assume everyone in transition is a potential client.

They’re not.

Career coaching isn’t a rescue purchase.
It’s an optimization purchase.

The people who reliably pay are mid-career professionals, managers, and executives—typically between 35 and 54. People with income, leverage, and something to lose if they make the wrong move.

For them, coaching is rational. A delayed search, a poorly timed pivot, or a misread market can cost tens of thousands of dollars—or permanently alter a trajectory.

That math works.

Entry-level professionals and hourly workers? Their transitions matter just as much. But the ROI is harder to justify, which is why they lean on universities, nonprofits, or public programs instead.

This is why “job seeker” is a useless target market.

Markets aren’t defined by need.
They’re defined by willingness and ability to pay.

The most durable coaching businesses focus on specific decision moments: post-layoff repositioning, mid-career plateaus, executive transitions, industry pivots.

For these clients, coaching isn’t therapy.
It’s strategy.

Why So Many Good Coaches Still Feel Stuck

Here’s the part nobody likes to say out loud.

Most coaches are solo. Roughly 70% are self-employed, doing delivery, marketing, sales, admin—and emotional labor—at the same time.

That’s not a failure.
That’s the structure of the work.

Career coaching is high-trust, high-context. Clients aren’t paying for information they could Google. They’re paying for judgment. Pattern recognition. Interpretation of ambiguous signals.

Those things are valuable.
They’re also hard to scale.

One-to-one work eventually hits a ceiling set by your calendar, not demand. Many coaches end up in the $40K–$100K range. Some earn far more—but averages are skewed by a small group of high performers.

The constraint isn’t demand.

It’s leverage.

The coaches who break through don’t stop being human. They package judgment differently: programs instead of ad hoc sessions, cohorts instead of endless 1:1s, frameworks instead of improvisation, tools that support decisions rather than constant live guidance.

Being solo isn’t the problem.
Being accidentally solo is.

Where Recruiters Get This Right—and Very Wrong

Recruiters often look at coaching and think, “I already do this.”

They’re not wrong.

They understand hiring signals, compensation realities, title translation, AI filters, and what actually gets traction in the market.

That perspective is valuable.

But most recruiters make the same mistake when they pivot into coaching: they stay tactical.

Resume tweaks. LinkedIn edits. Interview prep. Reactive advice tied to current openings.

Helpful? Yes.
Differentiated? No.

Coaching clients don’t pay for information. They pay for translation: What does this market mean for me? Which moves matter now? Which can wait? What’s the risk of acting—or not acting?

That’s strategy.

Executive coaching research consistently shows the highest ROI comes from decision support during transitions, not basic skill improvement

The most effective recruiter-turned-coaches position themselves as career decision partners, not job search helpers. They specialize. Specific people. Specific moments. Specific risks.

Generalists compete on volume.
Specialists compete on judgment.

And the market consistently rewards the latter.

The Real Takeaway

The career coaching market is real.
The opportunity is real.

But it’s selective.

It rewards people who understand they’re selling clarity, timing, and decision logic—not hours, tactics, or hustle.

The “boom” isn’t a boom. It’s a market maturing, fragmenting, and sorting itself—just like law, consulting, and marketing did before it.

Low barriers to entry mean practitioner growth outpaces revenue growth. That creates what you’re seeing now: a crowded field where some people thrive and most people struggle, even while doing good work.

The difference isn’t passion.
It’s positioning.

Know which layer of the market you’re in.
Know who actually pays.
Know what problem you’re truly solving.

Get that right—and the growth is there.
Miss it—and you’ll keep wondering why you’re working so hard for so little.

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One more thing before I go…

Thank you for bringing me to this milestone! I could not have done it without you.

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And as always, hit reply and let me know how I’m doing. Or slide into my DMs as the kids say. All good.

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