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The jobs apocalypse is postponed. An AI jobs boom is here

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/09/04/the-jobs-apocalypse-is-postponed-an-ai-jobs-boom-is-here
30•MrBuddyCasino•3h ago

Comments

Havoc•32m ago
Remind me what percentage of the workforce works “AI jobs”?
jatora•19m ago
Well one way to look at it is:

As a programmer, but working in two non-SWE roles, I have turned job A 70% over to AI, and job B 90%.

Where systems and scaffolds can be put in place to manage various aspects of a job, would this not be considered, partially, an "AI job"?

If you work in government grants and R&D, what if agents can now triage 100-1000x the opportunity count that you could ever handle alone, and you had a pipeline system in place to manage said opportunities and relationships? And then you, as the human, become the mouthpiece and reviewer of hoards of filtered output? Is that Federal Grants & R&D position now not mostly an AI job?

I'd say a large percentage of digital-based jobs can be considered varying percentages of AI jobs.

esafak•11m ago
I think they mean jobs directly related to AI, not merely exercising AI to increase productivity:

AI is also creating a new class of white-collar jobs. Engineers build the models, data annotators label their inputs and judge their answers, “forward-deployed” engineers adapt them for customers, and newly minted “heads of AI” decide what companies should do with the technology.

georgeburdell•30m ago
I can’t read the article but in my group, which is not terribly AI exposed due to its hands-on nature, we are in fact hiring extra people into next year to handle additional AI initiatives that I am confident will succeed. In subsequent years, the plan as I have heard it is to let headcount go down by attrition.

I would not take extra hiring now as evidence that AI is preserving job numbers.

Ifkaluva•23m ago
The article mostly cites the huge growth in blue-collar jobs caused by the data center buildout. It’s very handy-wavy about white collar jobs, “yes lots of jobs have been lost, but also the tech sector always has a lot of year-to-year churn, maybe this is just churn”.

Not a super insightful article. The AI jobs apocalypse may or may not be real, but this article doesn’t provide any compelling evidence for its thesis.

dbolgheroni•22m ago
What type of activities your group performs?
jerojero•24m ago
If most of the jobs its creating are related to construction of infrastructure then that's not really positive news as these jobs are temporary, once demand settles then why kind of jobs are going to be created?

It might be benefiting other areas, but I think as the technology improves a lot of those are going to start looking like what's happening in software development (which is arguably what the technology is best at right now).

So yeah, idk.

delichon•13m ago
AI construction jobs are temporary up to Kardashev 3 or so.
mrob•6m ago
Humans become irrelevant well before then.
wolttam•5m ago
But it will be automated long before then
alephnerd•7m ago
Most of these jobs are the same jobs that arose thanks to the CHIPS and IRA. Much of the AI boom and trade is building on top of the capex that arose from the semiconductor/hardware portfolio during that era.

Many of the current DCs being built out are also being powered or tied with renewable energy projects that were funded by the IRA, as many DC builders with deep pockets do know the political dimension.

Every industry and career type goes through ebbs and flows. The 2010s was a white collar boom, and the 2020s is now a white collar bust. Meanwhile the 2010s was a skilled trades bust and the 2020s is now a skilled trades boom.

konaraddi•23m ago
Paywalled

> On September 4th the Bureau of Labour Statistics reported that the American economy added 162,000 jobs in August, far above expectations.

Good news that ought to be taken with a pinch of salt given how the current administration responds to unfavorable BLS data -

> On Friday, August 1, [2025] President Trump fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer from her role as the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In social media posts announcing and confirming her firing, he said that he believed the jobs report released by the agency earlier that day included numbers that were “rigged in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”

https://www.epi.org/policywatch/firing-bls-commissioner-erik...

thombat•11m ago
The first series of "Blackadder" has a vignette of such reportage:

Messenger 3: My Lord, news…

King: What?

Messenger 3: Lord Wessex is dead.

King: This news is not so good.

Messenger 3: Pardon, My Lord?

King: I like it not. Bring me some other news.

Messenger 3: Pardon, My Lord?

King: I LIKE NOT THIS NEWS! BRING ME SOME OTHER NEWS!!!

Messenger 3: Yes, My Lord!

(Messenger 3 leaves; King tosses things around angrily; Messenger 4 enters — actually just Messenger 3 pretending to be a new messenger delivering new news.)

Messenger 4: My Lord, news…

King: What?

Messenger 4: Lord Wessex is not dead.

King: Ah, good news! Let there be joy and celebration; let jubilation reign!

flypunk•18m ago
https://archive.md/5hi5i
inquist•17m ago
> AI startups are hiring like there is no tomorrow.

This is not reassuring

rayiner•16m ago
I hope this results in a rebalancing of the social and economic power of high-IQ versus average-IQ workers. We will need construction workers and tradespeople to build and maintain these AI data centers. Probably even with robots. But we won’t need as many engineers, lawyers, and other people whose job it is to consume and generate bits. If we tax the proceeds of AI generated productivity sufficiently, this could be the beginning of returning to the dynamics of the 1940s-1960s, where economic power was more concentrated among skilled blue collar workers than it is now.
windward•12m ago
While I'm still catastrophically worried about what AI means for my career, I've noticed that my current employer - very AI forward, and growing the team - is still facing an ever expanding backlog.

High productivity is generally good for the employee, unless you're productive enough you run out of work to do. So how much code is needed?

dist-epoch•9m ago
AI boosters: "look, AI is creating jobs, all of these doomers scaring you with job loses, don't listen to them"

also AI boosters: "we are going to build a million robots, and the robots will build factories producing robots, there will be infinite abundance, nobody will need to work anymore"

DubiousPusher•3m ago
I've spent 10 years implementing new technology into businesses from all over the world and the thing that has killed the most projects at the proof of concept phase has not been whether it works. It's whether the cost of going to production from PoC produces a significant ROI. AI is absolutely changing the economics there.

Humans were simply nowhere near answering all the useful questions they had which software could answer. The problem was that software was expensive.

Now, software is cheaper and so people who couldn't afford to answer questions they've long wondered about can afford to answer them.

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