AI and automation forecast to eliminate 6% of US jobs by 2030, but fears may outpace reality

AI And Automation Will Take 6% Of US Jobs By 2030

Don't Confuse Financially-Driven Layoffs With AI Layoffs There's a common impression - among leaders, in the media, and among employees - that AI is already causing widespread unemployment. After all, the US saw well over a million jobs lost to layoffs in 2025. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff attributed some of the company's layoffs to internal use of its own AI solutions. And, if you walked down the streets of San Francisco, you probably saw Artisan's controversial urban advertisements broadcasting the message, "Stop Hiring Humans." But here's the dirty little secret of AI and layoffs: Every week, we speak to clients telling some version of the following story: "Our CEO said we are laying off 20% of staff and replacing them with AI - how do we do that?" When we ask if they have a mature, vetted AI app ready to fill in those jobs, nine out of ten times the answer is no, and they haven't even started. So, most of the layoffs are financially-driven, and AI is just the scapegoat, at least today. AI And Automation Will Take Some Jobs -- Just Not As Many As You Think Predictions about AI and job losses have run aground on the rocky shores of reality for a long time. In 2016, AI scientist Geoffrey Hinton made an ill-fated job prediction: "We should stop training radiologists now. It's just completely obvious that within five years, deep learning is going to do better than radiologists." Not only has radiology not gone away, it has grown; the Mayo Clinic's radiology staff grew 55% since then. But since our last iteration of this forecast in 2023, the world has changed. Agentic - or, at the moment, more agent-ish - AI has emerged, allowing organizations to create applications that are more accurate and that solve specific problems. We've also seen widespread investments in generative AI, with successes and failures that have taught the market how to get better results. As a result, our new forecast:

Is AI coming for your job? Here's one labor indicator that could soothe your fears

The US's productivity rate could indicate the real impact of AI. AI might not be putting you on the breadline just yet. A new report from research firm Forrester found that despite rampant anxiety around AI-driven job loss, the ubiquitous technology may only replace about 6% of jobs (about 10.4 million) in the US by 2030. The report, which launched at the end of December and is titled "The Forrester AI Job Impact Forecast, US, 2025-2030," highlighted strategies for keeping AI job loss panic on a low simmer and pointed out ways in which hype may be clouding our understanding of what's really happening on the job market. "It's not a small number, and [AI] will influence many more jobs and augment them and change how we work. That doesn't mean it's an apocalypse in the way that many people assume," Forrester VP, Principal Analyst J.P. Gownder told ZDNET. Also: Anxious about AI job cuts? How white-collar workers can protect themselves - starting now The report comes at a time when businesses are grappling with how to effectively implement and scale AI across their workforces, balancing the promises of cost savings and increased productivity with the reality of existing in the early days of buzzy tools like AI agents. Meanwhile, workers are wondering how long they'll be able to keep their jobs. News of layoffs and public comments from some tech leaders often paint a pessimistic picture. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said AI could wipe out half of entry-level white collar jobs. However, the firm's findings are in line with other projections, like an August report from Goldman Sachs, which estimated job losses in the 6-7% range, but only if adoption becomes widespread. Forrester identified several ways to keep the fear in check. Those include not confusing financially-motivated layoffs with AI layoffs. Gownder said that some CEOs may take a "brute force" perspective, wanting to cut a certain percentage of jobs in the name of AI, without actually having a mature, vetted AI tool that can do the job. Also: AI will cause 'jobs chaos' within the next few years, says Gartner - what that means "You're not replacing a job with AI," Gownder said. "You're replacing a job for financialized reasons with the vague hope that at some point you may be able to create an AI that does the work, and it is not guaranteed." The report also discussed keeping an eye on the right metrics - like productivity. Gownder explained that a jump in the US's productivity rate could be an indicator of AI's impact. In other words, fewer people doing more because of capital investments in AI. Currently, the rate's been lagging since the 1947-1973 era. "Until you see massive gains, you're not going to see these job losses the way that some believe," Gownder said. Still, Forrester made several revisions to earlier projections from 2023. Among them is the expanded role that generative AI, including agents, will play in job losses. Forrester forecasts that generative AI will be the cause of about 50% of roles lost to automation in 2030, up from 30%. Also: Is AI a career killer? Not if you have these skills, McKinsey research shows The firm also echoed what others have reported, namely that early-career, customer-service, and software jobs may be among the most vulnerable. To be sure, 6% still represents more than 10 million jobs, and trepidation among workers that they may be next to get a pink slip, in and of itself, could be damaging. "If you start coming in with this attitude of, 'we're going to automate as many people as we can and eliminate jobs,' and then you fail at it. Guess what? You still need your human people... with a good attitude, a good intrinsic motivation, or it hurts your business," Gownder said.

AI and automation could erase 10.4 million US roles by 2030

Forrester models slow, structural shift rather than sudden employment collapse AI-pocalypse AI and automation could wipe out 6.1 percent of jobs in the US by 2030 - equating to 10.4 million fewer positions that are held by humans today. This is according to Forrester veep and principal analyst J.P. Gownder, who states in a blog: "To give you a sense of the magnitude, the US lost 8.7 million jobs during the Great Recession. The numbers aren't directly comparable, since jobs lost to AI are structural and permanent while those lost during a recession are cyclical and macroeconomic. But no matter how you view it, the numbers are meaningful and worthy of our attention." The US population has also grown since the early part of this century, further muddying the waters when talking about absolute numbers. The "real but modest impact" that Forrester models between 2025 and 2030 suggests that the replacement of large chunks of the workforce remains unlikely, "as labor productivity would need to accelerate significantly for AI to replace human talent at scale." The more realistic scenario, it says, is that AI will "augment" one in five roles at the end of the forecast period, indicating employers may need to invest in staff training to prepare them for a new age. In the tech world, some of the SaaS providers are already making moves to replace parts of the workforce, including Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow. Still, risks remain. Forrester says there is a danger that "over-automating roles" based on the "hype surrounding" AI can result in "costly pullbacks, damaged reputations, and weakened employee experiences." Some businesses - Duolingo and Klarna spring to mind - rowed back their efforts to replace meatbags with AI. Forrester last year said it expects 55 percent of corporations to regret the decision to press ahead with these types of projects and quietly rehire people. Forrester today cites a million US layoffs in 2025 with some attributed to AI. Gownder recalls discussions with clients that want advice on laying off 20 percent of their staff in the lurch toward AI. "When we ask if they have a mature, vetted AI app ready to fill in those jobs, nine out of ten times, the answer is no - and they haven't even started. So most of the layoffs are financially driven and AI is just the scapegoat, at least today." So what has changed since Forrester's previous AI jobs forecast in 2023? Agentic AI has hit the market, and organizations are using it to create applications Forrester claims are more accurate - though not according to everyone - and solve specific problems. Generative AI projects, both successes and failures, are also teaching the market how to get better results, Gownder says. "Where our earlier forecast saw just 29 percent of US jobs lost to automation coming from GenAI, that number is now 50 percent, which accounts for agentic AI solutions that leverage GenAI as well." As for the 20 percent of positions that will be influenced by AI, this "represents a nearly fourfold increase compared with our 2023 forecast." All of which means that while jobs will be going, "we're not heading for an imminent AI job apocalypse." AI might take over some workflows and tasks, but in the next five years, Forrester thinks that work will be mostly undertaken by humans. ®

Report: How might AI and automation impact jobs leading up to 2030?

We take a look at some of Forrester's predictions for the US jobs market and explore what this might mean for the wider global landscape. When it comes to the conversation on artificial intelligence (AI), for the most part we all subscribe to a particular point of view. There are those who believe it has the potential to simplify working life, to the point that employees can focus on the aspects of their role that truly motivates them. For others, AI is a slippery slope that exposes the individual and the company to risk, bringing with it the potential to lower skills and make employees surplus to requirement. But, no one technology is inherently good or bad, it is representative of the creator and its user, meaning the real state of AI likely lies in the middle. When it comes to the growing fears that AI could reduce and eliminate jobs, the 'Forrester AI Job Impact Forecast, US, 2025-2030' report shows that, while there is room for concern, only 6pc of roles in the US have the potential to be automated by 2030. Research predicts that "automation and AI will have a real but modest impact on jobs", possibly equating to the loss of 10.4m roles. However, it notes that "widespread AI-driven job replacement remains unlikely, as labour productivity would need to accelerate significantly for AI to replace human talent at scale". Rather than eliminating roles, Forrester's research suggests that AI will impact jobs, with 20pc to be augmented over the course of the next four years. In turn the report theorises that this will enable businesses to further invest in employee training and upskilling. Additionally, the report finds that there is risk in buying into the AI hype as the over-automation of roles has the potential to lead to costly pullbacks, damaged reputations and weakened employee experiences and more than "half of layoffs attributed to AI will be quietly reversed as companies realise the operational challenges of replacing human talent prematurely". Commenting on the report, JP Gownder, the vice-president and a principal analyst at Forrester, said, "We may not be heading for an imminent AI job apocalypse, but how organisations handle AI today will define more than just their future success. Building relationships, creating value Informing, entertaining and connecting the world Join a culture that offers a world of possibilities Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together "To navigate the complexity around the human and AI era, leaders must prioritise governance and invest in their people,  treating AI not as a replacement for human talent but as a tool to enhance it." With this in mind, how might AI and automation impact Europe, over the course of the next four years, as we hurdle towards 2030? Different borders, same challenges Throughout 2025, many organisations cut their numbers in order to prioritise AI adoption and innovation, for example, Indeed, Glassdoor, Workday and Amazon. Some of which gave the excuse that the cuts were necessary to ensure their organisation was keeping pace with competitors in a modernising space. And certainly, there is potential for additional job loss as a result of AI in 2026, as evidenced by a recent Morgan Stanley report published by the Financial Times. The report suggested as many as 200,000 Europe-based banking roles could be eliminated by 2030, as AI fills the spot previously held by a person. Forrester, late last year, released predictions for how AI and automation might further impact Europe in 2026 and similar to the findings of the US-based report, it was discovered that when the hype and initial surge to implement new tech dies down, there could be a a greater focus given to issues such as AI governance, skills development and the use of AI agents. It noted, in the face of rising geopolitical tensions, ongoing uncertainties and new legislative initiatives, which include the European Green Deal and the introduction of the EU AI Act, European countries will be less likely to experiment with high-risk use cases and may instead increase reliance on US hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. At the end of the day, with The EU AI Act in play, according to experts, companies have an obligation to ensure the workforce is sufficiently skilled in AI literacy, perhaps resulting in greater access to training and subsequent upskilling opportunities. While this won't 'future-proof' an individual's career in the wake of modernisation, it does present employees with the opportunity to get ahead of the wave so to speak. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

The great AI job panic may be overblown: Report

While AI is reshaping the landscape of work, it hasn't completely disrupted the job market just yet. Companies are cautiously exploring the potential of AI, and the fear of massive job loss remains largely unfounded. "Beware of AI. AI is coming for your jobs." At least, that's the popular narrative. Ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, stories about companies quietly replacing entry-level jobs with algorithms have piled up. But according to a new Oxford Economics briefing, the evidence for an AI-led labour market shake-up is, for now, surprisingly thin. That's not to say AI isn't changing how companies work. It clearly is. Businesses are experimenting, reallocating budgets and figuring out where the tech can cut costs or speed things up. Amazon, in late 2025, reportedly began its process to replace 600,000 humans with robots by 2027. Indian IT giant Tata Consultancy Services' CEO K. Krithivasan, in 2024, told the Financial Times that AI will soon kill India's $48.9 billion IT and business process outsourcing industry. Meanwhile, McKinsey & Co. cut about 200 global tech jobs in November 2025 as it shifted more responsibilities to AI. However, Oxford Economics is diving deeper into this trend, asking if this has translated into a meaningful rise in unemployment? The short answer: not really. Take graduates, the group most often said to be under threat. In the US, unemployment among recent graduates rose from 3.9% when ChatGPT launched to a peak of 5.5% in early 2025. This was fuel for claims that AI was eating entry-level jobs. But the The Oxford Economics briefing suggests that rate has since fallen back, and the broader trend looks fairly mild by historical standards. In past downturns, graduate unemployment has almost always risen faster than overall joblessness. This time doesn't look especially different. Zooming out globally tells a similar story. Countries with the biggest jumps in graduate unemployment are also the ones where overall unemployment has risen the most. Places like Japan and South Korea, where labour markets have stayed tight, haven't seen the same graduate pain. That points more to old-fashioned economic cycles than a shiny new AI shock. Also Read: AI-led hiring lifted overall recruitment in 2025: Foundit Insights Tracker What about sectors that are supposedly most "automatable"? Here, too, the picture is nuanced. Some industries with higher AI adoption have seen bigger rises in unemployment. But that doesn't automatically mean workers are being replaced by machines. In many cases, firms appear to be diverting money into AI experiments and trimming other costs -- like hiring -- rather than directly swapping people for software. There's also a simple reality check: if AI were already replacing workers at scale, productivity should be booming. Fewer people, same output, right? Instead, productivity growth in the US and other advanced economies has cooled recently, not surged, the report noted. That suggests AI is still mostly in its trial phase -- interesting, promising, but not yet transformative at the economy-wide level. The raw layoff numbers back this up. AI-related job cuts in the US did rise sharply in 2025, but they still accounted for just 4.5% of total reported layoffs. Job losses blamed on "market and economic conditions" were more than four times higher. In a labour market where up to 1.8 million Americans lose a job every month, AI remains a relatively small player. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Stuart Gordon and Evgeniy Batchvarov also noted that workers are showing "limited appetite" to switch roles amid geopolitical and economic uncertainty. "Permanent staffing faces a tough 2026 as the segment remains under pressure," they added. Also Read: Is AI helping corporates or taking your job? 6 key takeaways from McKinsey's 2025 AI report Another under-discussed factor is that there are simply more graduates around. In the US and Europe, university-educated young people make up a much larger share of the population than they did a few years ago. When more graduates chase jobs at a time when hiring cools even slightly, unemployment can rise without any help from AI at all. None of this means disruption isn't coming. Oxford Economics is clear that faster AI adoption could still lead to sharper job losses down the line. But that outcome isn't inevitable -- and some early signs suggest the hype may be outrunning reality. Swedish fintech company Klarna, for instance, has already walked back hundreds of AI-linked job cuts after customer service suffered. Surveys in the US hint that AI adoption among big firms may even be plateauing. The takeaway is simply that while AI is changing workplaces, it hasn't yet upended the labour market. For now, the robots are still mostly in the testing phase -- impressive in demos, useful in pockets, but far from staging a full-blown jobs coup.