The creator economy has seen the rise of a new kind of creator: someone who still has to be at their desk on Monday. LinkedIn calls them workfluencers, and CEO Dan Shapero says creators on the platform are up 60 percent since 2024, with 83 percent of them posting while holding a day job. LinkedIn hasn’t published how it defines a creator or what period the 60 percent covers, so the numbers are the company’s account of its own platform. Its favorite example is a Kraft Heinz researcher who posts about her work tasting food past its sell-by date.
Some of them get paid. Shapero says workfluencers are landing brand deals worth hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, but he’s careful: “For most people, it’s not a replacement for a day job. It’s a way to expand how they build their career.” They’re not all executives, either. LinkedIn says 36 percent of workfluencers are entry-level and 31 percent are senior. Over two years, the number of workfluencers in computer and network security grew 128 percent and in software development 117 percent. Common day jobs include creative director, teacher, editor, researcher, and graphic designer.
And brands are paying attention, because they want a piece of the trust these workfluencers have built. LinkedIn and Ipsos found in 2025 that 55 percent of B2B marketers already use creator marketing on the platform, with another 29 percent planning to start within a year. In a YouGov survey for LinkedIn’s 2026 B2B Marketing Outlook, 56 percent of B2B buyers who use creators said they rely on creator input in the final stage of a purchase to confirm a recommendation. Brooke Sweedar, who was working in recruiting when she started and brands herself the “tech baddie,” shows how personal it can get. She shares what she’s learning about coding with jokes, selfies, and cat videos, has close to 30,000 followers, and has been offered paid posts by companies like Notion.
What makes a workfluencer valuable is that the job is the credential. Creator analytics company Favikon even checks for it. Its authenticity score for LinkedIn and X puts about 30 percent of the weight on spotting AI-generated, templated posts and about 20 percent on whether a creator’s content matches their professional background. Someone who really does the work passes that test with flying colors.
TikTok has its own version of work-as-content, but one of the biggest stars found out that hard way what happens when you try to leave the niche behind. Creator Hubs, who goes by @hubs.life, built an audience posting tightly edited “day in my life” videos that included his 9-to-5 as a senior benefits analyst at a Fortune 500 company. Then he quit to become a full-time creator. The comments quickly turned hostile when he made the pivot. People said they wanted to see someone like them, someone who was also struggling. One viewer wrote, “Your success was based on being relatable to us normal 9-5 people.” When he realized what was happening, he apparently rented a desk in a coworking space and tried calling it his “new 9-5.” It only made fans angrier, and his account never fully recovered. People are still talking about his rise and fall, with a video posted as recently as 12 hours ago as of this writing. In the comments of that video, one person even says, “Hubslife is a modern-day fable of influencing too close to the sun.”
But there are plenty of workfluencers who haven’t left their 9-to-5s. Many of them are focusing on workwear. TikTok is full of creators whose content is what they wear to the office. Whitney Grett (@whitneygrett) has racked up more than 200,000 likes on a budget-friendly office outfit video. Taryn (@inconsistentinfluencer) shares “what I wore to the office this week,” Mulan (@mu14n) posts outfit rotations as a corporate lawyer, and Arielle(@ariellesot) shares what she wears to her work in financial services dealing with private equity clients and does quick “yes/no” reviews of outfits other creators share. Runway Magazine reported in May that “corporate core,” or the “office siren” look, is replacing streetwear among luxury fashion influencers. These creators sell aspiration, but a relatable kind, an outfit you could actually wear to your own job.
Even if corporate wear is making its way out of the office, the smart workfluencers won’t. Fans want to see what life (and fashion) is really like in the real world, in real office settings. Cosplaying a 9-5 office worker isn’t going to cut it, because it erodes all that trust that the workfluencer built. And it is that trust that pays them. And without it, they will have to go back to a 9-5 for good.