Who wants to be a speechwriter in 2025?

Thanks for reading Pluck! Today, we’re talking about the state of the speechwriting profession—as a job, and as a calling.

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Within the communications field, being a speechwriter comes with its own cachet. You’re the person behind the Very Important Person. You’re in the Room Where It Happens. You write the Words People Remember.

Shows like The West Wing make it all look impossibly sexy. And as a new crop of college graduates make their way into the world this month, at least a few have no doubt drunk the Kool-Aid and aspire to join our ranks.

But is being a speechwriter any way to make a living in 2025?

It’s complicated.

Let’s talk about the most practical issue first: Can you land a speechwriting job right now? The simple answer is yes… but you can’t be too attached to having “speechwriter” as your title.

Outside of politics, not many leaders are delivering long-form speeches anymore. Instead, panel discussions and interview-style fireside chats have become the norm.

What’s behind this shift? First, many executives don’t have the time or desire to put in the work a keynote requires. Even with a speechwriter drafting your remarks, you still need to show up with a strong idea and practice your delivery. This can be a surprisingly high bar to clear.

Then there’s the keynote commitment phobia. A speech is about as “on the record” as it gets. If a statement causes blowback, it’s a lot easier to claim you misspoke in a conversational setting than if you read from prepared remarks.

And why take the risk? It’s not like audiences are clamoring for sustained rhetoric. Attention spans are practically nonexistent. It’s hard enough to get people to show up for an event, let alone put away their phones and listen to someone (anyone!) talk for 20 minutes.

In this environment, hiring a dedicated speechwriter just doesn’t make sense for most organizations. Opportunities still exist in politics and academia, but they’re few and far between—and competition for open positions is stiff.

This doesn’t mean speechwriting is a dying art, though. It’s just gotten folded into communications roles with much broader portfolios. As leaders get asked to weigh in on increasingly complex and thorny issues, the demand for executive communications practitioners is expanding at a rapid clip.

Success in these roles demands a lot more than an ear for the spoken word. Executive communicators need to craft a consistent voice across engagements and platforms that resonates with internal and external stakeholders alike. They need to be fluent in digital best practices, audience analysis, event planning, and so much more. And while writing remarks for a town hall or conference might still fall within those responsibilities, it will be one of 20 other balls juggled that week.

So yes, it’s still possible to land a speechwriting job in 2025. But that still leaves a a more philosophical question to consider: should you want to?

Pretty much no one working in communications is having fun these days. The weariness is palpable any time a group of us convene.

We talk about whether budget cuts or advancements in AI will put us out of work.

We talk about the leaders we support who don’t want to say—or think they can’t say—much of anything at all.

We talk about the very real fear that we’re part of the problem—contributing to a culture where everyone talks but no one listens.

We talk about whether we’d be better off doing something—anything—else.

But then I remember that there’s a difference between having a job and following a calling.

Jobs are meant to be sought, celebrated, molded, loathed, discarded. I’ve had jobs where it felt like I got the Ted Sorensen dream—the travel, the access, the influence, the impact. I’ve also had jobs where seeing my principal’s name pop up on caller ID made me never want to write again. Each had their time, each imparted their lesson.

Callings, meanwhile, are both consistent and persistent. They keep saying the same thing in different words, tones, languages. They keep knocking on your door, tugging at your sleeve, asking you to follow across uneven terrain and into stormy weather. You could try to ignore it, but it would just keep showing up.

After all these years, I’ve accepted what speechwriting is.

You can take away the title, take away the job security, take away the speeches themselves.

You can make the work feel obsolete, irrelevant, impotent.

You’ll still find us out here: sharing knowledge, building connection, creating understanding, making meaning.

Call it what you want. We’ll keep choosing it. There’s no other option.

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Pluck: A Newsletter for Fearless Communicators is produced by Justine Adelizzi, an award-winning speechwriter and communications leader. She is the founder of FEARLESScomms, a coaching and consulting firm dedicated to creating fearless communicators.