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Afford Anything | Make Smart Money Choices

Job Titles Don’t Mean What They Used To (And That Affects Your Pay) — with Dr. Ben Zweig (Part 2 of 2)

Afford Anything | Make Smart Money Choices

Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network

Entrepreneurship, Investing, Business

4.73.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2026

⏱️ 68 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

#694: There are about 90 million unique job titles in the U.S. labor market. Ninety million. If you are trying to negotiate a raise, switch companies or launch a side hustle, that number has consequences. If titles do not line up, you cannot easily compare pay, scope or seniority. You might be doing the same work as someone with a higher title and higher salary - and never see it. That problem is the focus of Part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Ben Zweig. Zweig is the CEO of Revelio Labs, a workforce data firm that analyzes millions of job postings and online profiles. He also teaches The Future of Work at NYU Stern School of Business and holds a PhD in economics from the CUNY Graduate Center. His work focuses on how jobs are structured and how they evolve. We talk about taxonomy - the systems used to categorize work. A title acts as shorthand for a bundle of tasks. Trouble starts when the shorthand breaks down. Two people with the same title may do very different work. Two people with different titles may perform nearly identical tasks. Zweig explains how large language models can group job descriptions based on actual responsibilities rather than labels. That approach could make it easier for workers to search accurately and for companies to organize teams. The conversation shifts to management. He argues that managers spend much of their time reconfiguring roles as business needs change. Technology accelerates that reconfiguration rather than replaces it. We close with stories about bank tellers and typists. Their titles remained familiar. Their tasks transformed over time. Resource: ⁠Job Architecture: Building a Language for Workforce Intelligence⁠ by Ben Zweig Share this episode with a friend, colleagues, and your bank teller: https://affordanything.com/episode694 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

There are 90 million job titles that are floating around online.

0:04.3

90 million.

0:05.7

But are there actually 90 million different jobs?

0:08.8

Because the thing is, sometimes two people with completely different titles can essentially

0:14.2

be doing the same type of work.

0:16.4

And other times, two people with the same title could be doing totally different work. Across companies

0:22.9

and across industries, job titles and job descriptions don't map to each other in any standardized

0:28.7

way. Here's the problem. If there are 90 million job titles floating around online,

0:35.0

how are you supposed to know what you're qualified for? How are you

0:38.5

supposed to know whether or not you're underpaid, you're misleveled, or maybe you're applying

0:45.6

for the wrong roles entirely? If job titles don't mean what you think they mean, that affects

0:52.4

how you search for jobs, how you negotiate for your salary

0:55.9

and benefits, how you position yourself. It affects when you walk into a new role what you think

1:02.2

you do. Like if you don't have a clear sense of how your role is structured, what tasks define

1:07.7

it, what kinds of skills cluster together around it. You can't even adapt when

1:13.3

those pieces start to shift as they are quite rapidly right now. Because if AI is changing the

1:20.0

tasks inside of jobs, how do you adapt and how do you stay competitive if you don't know

1:25.5

which parts of your role are scarce and which parts

1:28.9

are becoming commoditized? And frankly, if your title doesn't accurately reflect what you do,

1:34.7

how do you negotiate, how do you apply for the right roles? How do you assess the field and make

1:40.1

comparisons to what people with similar roles to you are making in other industries or

1:45.4

at other companies, how do you bring structure to something that's this chaotic?

...

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