McKinsey & Company said in a report published today that about 11 million American workers, or roughly 7% of the current workforce, may need to change jobs by 2035 because of the impact of artificial intelligence, or AI. That means the number of US workers who must switch occupations each year could triple over the coming decade, up from a historical average of about 215,000. The report said that as many as 6 in 7 of these workers will need major retraining and will lose income. Full-time employees most likely to need to change jobs are concentrated in three groups: office support and administrative work, retail and sales work, and transportation and logistics work, covering positions such as customer service representatives, cashiers, and warehouse workers. These workers are nearly eight times more likely to need to change jobs than high earners. McKinsey proposed that federal, state, and local governments in the United States help workers by providing more detailed and timely labor market information, as well as allocating funding to support retraining programs. The report's authors estimate that between 6 million and 16 million workers may need to change occupations, given uncertainty over the pace of AI adoption and its impact on labor demand across industries.
McKinsey authored the report on AI-driven job displacement; no clear positive or negative financial impact on the firm itself.
