White Collar Jobs in the Age of AI: Who Will Be Left Behind?

Goldman Sachs projects that up to 300,000,000 jobs could be "replaced" by AI, a staggering statistic that strikes fear into the hearts of many. Every day, we encounter a barrage of YouTube videos and news articles forewarning us that AI is coming for all of our jobs. It's confusing, and workforce anxiety is increasing across every generation. 

In speaking with many candidates and employees, they typically fall into two extremely opposite camps. 

1. Not Worried: This group isn't considering how AI might affect their jobs. It's not on their radar, and they will cross that bridge when they come to it. 

2. Extremely Worried: This group is going down YouTube and media rabbit holes to see if their job will be affected (similar to experiencing a headache and going to WebMD for a diagnosis). This group is growing daily. 

Workforce Revolutions:

Historically, there have been three significant workforce revolutions:

1. Agricultural Revolution

2. Industrial Revolution

3. Digital Revolution

All three revolutions completely changed the nature of work, requiring us to adapt our skills, knowledge, and working methods to thrive. In fact, every technological revolution has created more jobs than it has destroyed. We as a society were able to pivot fairly quickly as it related to the speed of these transformations, and in the end, we were better off.

We are undoubtedly in the beginning stages of a new workforce revolution, the AI Revolution. Some experts believe that Generative AI can add anywhere from $4 to $20 trillion of value to the global economy, which is staggering.

How It Will Affect Workers:

AI in the workforce is so new that it hasn't been properly deciphered; however, it is generally accepted that it will impact white-collar jobs by falling within one of three buckets.

1. Automation: Jobs that can be fully replaced.

2. Augmentation: Portions of the job function that can be automated.

3. Transformation: The job function will incur fundamental changes.

Every white-collar job will fall into one of these three buckets over the next 5-10 years (probably sooner). Companies must recognize which bucket to use to plan and optimize their workforce properly. To recognize which bucket they fall into, it's better to focus on skills vs. job titles. 

The Skills Bubble:

The correlation between the buckets above and workers' skills is evident in what I call the "skills bubble."

Think of this bubble chart as one's career advancement. Over time, they gain more and more skills, making them more and more valuable and/or indispensable to companies.

Individuals with skills positioned in the Intermediate and Advanced categories are better positioned to weather the AI future. In fact, in most cases, I believe they will be better off than before.

Jobs likely to be fully automated typically involve routine tasks without substantial creative or strategic thinking, thus falling into the Beginner bubble. This is not a knock on this group; we have all been there at one point. Some of us are still there; most want to expand their skill set and gain career growth over time. 

My biggest fear is that the Beginner bubble resembles the real estate bubble of 2008, which could pop at any time and leave behind a large and vulnerable population.

Bucket of Concern:

The Automation Bucket, comprised mostly of routine, beginner skills (relatable to the Beginner bubble), faces significant challenges. To put it bluntly, this group is in trouble, and there are several reasons for this.

1. Career Ceiling: If companies can fully automate their jobs, the opportunity to earn the transition from the Beginner bubble to the Intermediate bubble will be severely limited. We have to be honest with ourselves and ask if we really believe that companies will spend time and money upskilling employees if they don't have to.

2. Displacement in Competitive Job Markets: Eliminating white-collar jobs due to automation will increase competition for the remaining positions, making it challenging for displaced workers to secure comparable roles or negotiate favorable salaries.

*Using an estimate of a 5-year displacement period for the Beginner group:

• Layoffs will increase

• Job openings will decrease

• Newly created jobs won't keep up

3. The Limbo Period (most important): As AI fully replaces their job functions, these individuals will be displaced unprecedentedly, leaving them in a dire situation. Society will need to act swiftly to address the displacement of this large group. We will not know what to do with this population, and there could be a 2-5-year period where they are in a very uncomfortable limbo before we figure out how to create new jobs, as we have done in every other workforce revolution. 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I am convinced that integrating AI into job functions will be significantly more positive than negative for workers and organizations. Worker displacement from automation has historically been offset by creating new jobs, which will happen here. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't ensure that we do our best to bring everyone along. It all comes down to "the pivot."

• The Agricultural Revolution unfolded over several millennia.

• The Industrial Revolution unfolded over 100+ years.

• The Digital Revolution unfolded over several decades.

• The AI Revolution will unfold over several years.

This AI Revolution will move exponentially faster than the previous three workforce revolutions, so we as a society need to act exponentially quicker to get ahead before we leave a large group behind.