Many like to write about the “jobs apocalypse” coming from AI. My perspective, as an analyst and advisor for the last 30 years, is that things are not going to be as wierd and disruptive as they think. And it appears that the US Department of Labor agrees.
Here is a brief analysis of the BLS 2025-2035 analysis and my perspective.
Six Major Findings
The US Workforce is growing much more slowly than in prior decades. The workforce will grow by only 3.5%, almost a third slower than the 10.9% growth in the last decade. This means most companies will have shortages, even as AI automates work.
Our new research on AI maturity shows a distinct shift from “job automation” to customer and business growth, which means human roles are still a limiting factor in most companies.The US Workforce is aging, with “over 65” workers one of the fastest growing segments.
Today 7% of the workforce is over 65: in ten years this will be 8.5% of the workforce, a 21% growth rate. (7 times the rate of overall workforce growth.) And workers over 65 will be very active “unretired” people.Healthcare and home health aids continue to dominate our labor market growth.
Home health and personal care aids will make up 5.5 million people, growing by 18%. Registered nurses will make up 3.7 million, and they have the highest wage growth by percentage of any segment. Nurse practitioner jobs will grow in number by 41% and average wage will go from $132,000 to $181,000.
37% of all job growth is in healthcare and the total US employment in healthcare goes from 13.3% to 14%.AI is quickly reducing the need for many low wage administrative jobs.
The jobs decreasing most rapidly include cashiers, clerks, bookeepers, secretaries, receiving clerks, retail managers, secretaries, tellers, and other administrative positions. This is not a new trend, but the BLS believes it will accelerate.
Some IT jobs such as computer support specialists, programmers, and data entry are also declining in number and wages. So jobs that we considered “high wage” are now becoming administrative.
Construction jobs are growing (laborers, electricians, plumbers) are 2-3 times the rate of the total job market, as I discuss below. And thanks to our new AI economy, jobs in energy and power production are also growing… as are jobs in health sciences, which contribute to the growth in healthcare service delivery.Human-centric work (management, sales, support) remain strong job families.
I analyzed the data by “human touch” and “human centric” in detail and it’s very clear that these types of jobs are growing in number and wages. Those which involve face to face contact (nursing, health aids) are growing fastest and jobs in management are also growing (by 6%, almost twice overall growth).
This reinforces our Supermanager research (also in the book) which explains how managers are not going away, rather they’re becoming “more managerial” and “less supervisory” thanks to AI. And AI is now handling scheduling and other frontline work tasks which bog down managers today.
The BLS believes sales jobs will shrink in demand, from 8.5% to 8.1%. This drop is mostly driven by elimination of retail sales jobs, not high value sales, which may grow in importance as they become Superpowered with ever improving tools and data.Wage premiums are quickly moving to the “Superworker” job families.
My analysis (below) shows how jobs that are “AI enabled” go UP in value (Not down). A software engineer who is AI powered is no longer a “programmer” but now a product leader, problem solver. An HR business partner who uses AI no longer has to look up data or policies, they are a consultant and advisor.
Our research shows that these Superworker job families have wages growing at twice the rate of inflation today. If you look at US OEWS (Department of labor job categories) for 830 job titles from 2024 to 2025 to 2026 you find that the jobs most substituted by AI have see wages fall behind by around 28%.
This is not the same as “jobs exposed to AI.” Jobs that are exposed may be Superworker jobs (they are upgraded). Jobs “substituted” by AI are downgraded.
The “Superworker” Effect
The big shift going on is the “Superworker” effect, as we detail in our upcoming book “Superpowered” coming in October. Put simply, AI and automation is not “eliminating jobs” but rather “superpowering” jobs.
By eliminating more and more “routine” work (and the definition of what is routine is changing), the job of cashier, clerk, customer service rep, administrative assistant, or even bookeeper is vanishing. These individuals won’t be unemployed, however. They’ll be doing reinvented work, work which focuses on the core of their role, not the “tasks” which consumed their time.
Here is how we analyzed the Superworker effect.
For each of the 830 job titles in the BLS data we categorized jobs into four categories:
Human Touch (a human must touch another person or the work by hand)
Nurse, pediatrician, plumber, electrician…
Human Centric (a human must empathize, listen, teach, or support)
Psychologist, counselor, judge, line manager, HR advisor, policeman…
AI Enhanceable (AI can significantly enhance this job)
Analyst, accountant, executive, software engineer
AI Replaceable (most of this job can be eliminated by AI)
Cashier, clerk, data entry manager, IT support agent.
What we found is the following.
By today’s best guess, almost half the “work” in the US involves some form of human touch (largely medical) and today around 13% of all jobs could be “automated away.”
The green “AI Enhanceable” and orange “Human Centric” can be aided tremendously by AI. Many of these could become Superworker jobs, yet some (ie. Policemen) are still highly human centric.
If you look at 2025 to 2035 changes, you can see what’s going on. Many of these jobs are likely to go away.
Over time of course these categories will change. Robots will impact the human touch jobs and more and more “human centric” jobs will be impacted AI.
Looking Ahead to 2035
There is a lot to look at here, so I put together some summary charts. I encourage you to read the source BLS research for your own situation, and consult Galileo for personal advice (Galileo has all this data).
