Like many millennials, 34-year-old Janel Abrahami thought she had done everything right to set herself up for career success. As a 2014 New York University graduate, Abrahami says she and her peers had “a very clear blueprint in front of [them], which was to pick a great major and get a good job with a lot of runway that you can foresee a long career ahead.”

With a psychology degree on her resume, Abrahami started a career in human resources and worked her way up the ladder at NBC, Stitch Fix, and Tinder. But, along her roughly 10-year corporate journey she says she quickly realized that “the whole career landscape changed” and the career security that used to be taken for granted was slowly slipping away.

According to new Glassdoor data , which surveyed more than 1,800 U.S. professionals, 76% of millennial workers, who are currently ages 30 to 45 years old, are actively questioning their career paths. In another Glassdoor survey of over 2,400 U.S. professionals, 68% of millennials said they’ve delayed a major life milestone because of career uncertainty. This is a generation that should be used to disruption, since many came of age during the Great Recession and weathered mass layoffs during the global pandemic. But Chris Martin, Glassdoor’s senior economist, explains that the layoffs and AI disruption of today are even more disconcerting since they’re happening at a pivotal point in their careers. As a result, he says many millennials are taking a proactive approach to building a broader, more diversified professional foundation, which Glassdoor refers to as “stability stacking.”

“Millennials are at the point in their career now where they should be the most stable,” Martin says. “They’ve reached management, an increasing number are approaching leadership positions where they’re in the C-Suite or VP or above. They’re reaching peak earnings as well. So there are all these things that are the hallmarks of a solid mid-career, but that’s just not what millennials are feeling.”

According to Glassdoor, millennials make up the largest share of the labor force at about 33% and have nearly overtaken Gen X’s share of management. There are now more millennials than baby boomers in executive positions, Glassdoor reports.

What Is ‘Stability Stacking’ and Why are Millennials Doing It?

In an unstable labor market where hiring is slow and job growth is uneven across sectors, Martin says that stability stacking is something that he and other experts are hearing about anecdotally as a strategic response to economic uncertainty.

“For me, stability stacking was really born out of the realization that it was not smart to put all of my eggs in one basket financially, professionally, or even fulfillment wise,” says Abrahami, who admits that she first realized this when she faced her own career crisis during the pandemic.

“I got to a point in my career where I was watching some of my peers who I really respected and had started my career with become recognized outside of their companies for their expertise, for things that they could do well, and for their accomplishments,” she says. “But I realized I was only known as Janel from HR at this company. And I wanted to be known as just Janel on my own expertise without people needing to have worked at the same company as me to know me.”

At the time, Abrahami says,pandemic layoffs were happening and she realized she could easily be hit as well.

“I knew that performance reviews didn’t matter and that I could be part of a mass reduction in force,” she says. To cope with this feeling of uneasiness, Abrahami used her HR experience and masters degree in human resources and organizational behavior to start career coaching on the side in 2020. This not only fulfilled her desire to help other professionals navigate their careers, but it also helped her to diversify her own professional resume and income streams.

During her career coaching sessions she realized a stark contrast between the conversations she was privy to in her HR role where companies were talking about posting X number of phantom jobs just to not look suspicious amid mass layoff headlines, and the reality that her clients were actually facing.

“I was talking to a millennial career coaching client who had all of the right credentials and who had the network that should have helped her cut the line, so to speak,” recalls Abrahami. “She was applying to 10 jobs a day and couldn’t get a call back. And she was like, ‘What am I doing wrong?’ And all I wanted to do was tell her about the conversations I had earlier that she would never be privy to and that’s when I realized this is a bigger thing.”

Abrahami launched a careers newsletter in 2020 called “Going Places,” turned it into a content and media business in 2021 and is now a full-time entrepreneur who has built a diversified portfolio of career skills as an executive coach, speaker, consultant, and content creator. As someone who has weathered many economic shifts in her career, she says “stability stacking is a way to give myself more a feeling of confidence that I have other irons in the fire and should I need to find a new opportunity, I’ve already been cultivating those on the side.”

How to ‘Stability Stack’ Your Own Career

While Martin and Abrahami agree that there is no one way to “stability stack” your career, they offer a few options for how professionals, regardless of generation, can build some level of security.

1. Build your network: While creating a new side hustle may seem like an obvious step to stability stacking, Abrahami encourages professionals to not underestimate the impact of building opportune connections . “Maybe neither of you are sure on how you’ll work together in the beginning, but you kind of just know that you will,” she says. “And when that opportunity arises at least you have that person on speed dial should you need to tap into them. That’s a new opportunity or a new door that has opened that wasn’t open before.”

2. Stack your skills: With so much uncertainty around AI and how it will reshape certain roles, Martin says that taking a skills-based approach to stability stacking could be a smart move. “Think about a couple of different skill-based responses where you can gain proficiency in AI-based skills or skills that are more resilient to AI replacement ,” he suggests. “So maybe you spend less time in a spreadsheet and more time doing strategic planning or something like that where an AI replacement is a little bit farther off.”

3. Share your expertise publicly: As someone who has created multiple streams of income from creating content, Abrahami advises professionals to not be afraid to share their thoughts and knowledge about a subject they’re well-versed in publicly. “I think what a lot of my millennial and Gen Z peers are realizing and leaning into is that creating content, not necessarily on any given platform, but putting our writing out there, putting our thoughts and ideas and our POV out there is also opening a lot of doors that were closed to us through traditional job search methods in the past.”

4. Build financial security: While building your network, skills, and expertise are ways to stability stack and protect your career, Abrahami and Martin say it’s also important for professionals to build their income sources and bank account in order to financially protect themselves in the event of a layoff. This can include freelancing on the side, turning your expertise into a side consulting gig, or picking up a side hustle that you do alongside your day job. Then, save the extra income.

With Glassdoor reporting that millennial workplace reviews are more likely to include keywords around burnout, job insecurity, and layoffs compared to other generations, Abrahami says stability stacking can be viewed as a psychological safety net amid today’s uncertain landscape.

“A lot of us are feeling so burned out by the monotony of our roles and also by the constant fear of will I be replaced? Will I be laid off? Or will this end tomorrow?,” says Abrahami. “So many things are wrapped up in traditional employment that from my point of view, this burnout or low grade fear that we live in in the traditional workplace is a catalyst of looking into stability stacking.”

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