Data story
AI and jobs: what the sources say
BLS's 2025-35 outlook beside each published AI exposure study, for the 25 largest jobs we track.
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Future History. (2026, November 1). AI and jobs: what the sources say. https://futurehistory.earth/trends/ai-and-jobs
Future History. "AI and jobs: what the sources say." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified November 1, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/trends/ai-and-jobs.
@misc{futurehistory_ai_and_jobs, author = {{Future History}}, title = {AI and jobs: what the sources say}, year = {2026}, month = nov, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/trends/ai-and-jobs}}, note = {Last updated 2026-11-01. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }
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Of the 25 largest jobs we track, BLS projects employment from 2025 to 2035 to grow in 15, to decline in 5 and to change by less than 1 percent in 5 (BLS Employment Projections 2025-35). Studies of AI exposure measure how much of a job's work AI could touch; none of them is a forecast of job losses.
Data as of: BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35.
The 25 largest jobs: the BLS outlook and each AI study
Retail Salespersons, Fast Food and Counter Workers, General and Operations Managers and 22 more below.
Solid where an official survey counted, hazy where a figure is researched, dotted where nobody counted. Past the last count, a river fans into its cited forecasts.
The 25 largest jobs: the BLS outlook and each AI study
| Job | Jobs, BLS OEWS | BLS projected change in jobs | Tasks exposed to large language models (Eloundou and others, 2023) | Probability of computerisation (Frey and Osborne, 2013) | Tasks exposed to AI automation in the job's group (Goldman Sachs, 2023) | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retail Salespersons | 3,897,860May 2025 | -0.3%2025 to 2035 | 35.5% | 0.92 | None cited | |
| Fast Food and Counter Workers | 3,854,050May 2025 | +5.8%2025 to 2035 | 7.3% | None cited | None cited | |
| General and Operations Managers | 3,503,020May 2025 | +5%2025 to 2035 | 38.5% | 0.16 | None cited | |
| Registered Nurses | 3,379,720May 2025 | +5.6%2025 to 2035 | 38.1% | None cited | None cited | |
| Cashiers | 3,089,410May 2025 | -6.5%2025 to 2035 | 36% | 0.97 | None cited | |
| Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand | 2,950,280May 2025 | +1.8%2025 to 2035 | 6% | 0.85 | None cited | |
| Stockers and Order Fillers | 2,833,810May 2025 | +8.9%2025 to 2035 | 19.1% | 0.64 | None cited | |
| Customer Service Representatives | 2,595,750May 2025 | -5.3%2025 to 2035 | 70.5% | 0.55 | None cited | |
| Office Clerks, General | 2,464,940May 2025 | -6%2025 to 2035 | 50% | 0.96 | 46%office and administrative support occupations | |
| Waiters and Waitresses | 2,270,910May 2025 | +2%2025 to 2035 | 22.4% | 0.94 | None cited | |
| Janitors and Building Cleaners | 2,209,760May 2025 | +2.2%2025 to 2035 | 2.8% | 0.66 | None cited | |
| Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers | 2,062,040May 2025 | +3.8%2025 to 2035 | 17.3% | 0.79 | None cited | |
| Secretaries and Administrative Assistants | 1,706,790May 2025 | -6%2025 to 2035 | 56.7% | 0.96 | 46%office and administrative support occupations | |
| Software Developers | 1,687,890May 2025 | +10.2%2025 to 2035 | 44.7% | None cited | 29%computer and mathematical occupations | |
| Maintenance and Repair Workers, General | 1,529,700May 2025 | +4.2%2025 to 2035 | 7.8% | 0.64 | None cited | |
| Accountants and Auditors | 1,449,500May 2025 | +5%2025 to 2035 | 52% | 0.94 | None cited | |
| Nursing Assistants | 1,448,910May 2025 | +2.6%2025 to 2035 | 13.6% | None cited | None cited | |
| First-Line Supervisors of Office and Administrative Support Workers | 1,436,680May 2025 | +0.1%2025 to 2035 | 53.1% | None cited | None cited | |
| Cooks, Restaurant | 1,409,890May 2025 | +12.1%2025 to 2035 | 12.2% | 0.96 | None cited | |
| Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education | 1,388,390May 2025 | -0.4%2025 to 2035 | 31.1% | 0.0044 | None cited | |
| Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks | 1,373,680May 2025 | -5.6%2025 to 2035 | 31.4% | 0.98 | None cited | |
| Security Guards | 1,283,470May 2025 | +0.9%2025 to 2035 | 25% | 0.84 | None cited | |
| Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel | 1,256,010May 2025 | +2.7%2025 to 2035 | 56.7% | None cited | None cited | |
| Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products | 1,238,190May 2025 | -0.9%2025 to 2035 | 70.7% | None cited | None cited | |
| First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers | 1,223,240May 2025 | +5.4%2025 to 2035 | 25.6% | None cited | None cited |
What BLS’s own research says
“BLS projection methods are not designed to capture extremely rapid technological change and, therefore, assume that the overall pace of technological change will be consistent with past experience.”
“There is little support in U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data or projections for the idea of a general acceleration of job loss or a structural break with trends pre-dating the AI revolution with respect to the occupations cited as examples.”
How this list was made
- Rows are the 25 timelines with the most jobs in the May 2025 BLS OEWS survey, largest first. The order is by size only: no column is a score, and the studies are never combined.
- BLS projected change: the BLS Employment Projections 2025-35 figure for the occupation, which counts all jobs including the self-employed. BLS describes a change under 1 percent either way as little or no change.
- Eloundou and others (2023): the share of the job's tasks where a large language model could cut the time a person needs by at least half, with tasks that also need software built on the model counted at half weight (their human-rated beta measure).
- Frey and Osborne (2013): their estimate of the probability that the whole occupation could be computerised, over "some unspecified number of years, perhaps a decade or two".
- Goldman Sachs (2023): the share of work tasks exposed to automation by AI across the job's whole occupational group in the US, not this job alone.
- "None cited" means we hold no figure from that source for the job. Not a forecast of job losses: an exposure figure says what AI could touch, not how many jobs will go.
What these numbers cannot tell you
- Exposure is not replacement. A job with highly exposed tasks can grow if the work left over is in demand; BLS projections already weigh that for the decade to 2035.
- BLS OEWS counts wage and salary jobs; BLS projections count all jobs, so the two are not compared here.
Sources
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025
- BLS Employment Projections 2025-35, National Employment Matrix
- Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock (2023), "GPTs are GPTs", occupation-level data
- Frey and Osborne (2013), "The Future of Employment", appendix
- Briggs and Kodnani (2023), "The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth", Goldman Sachs, Exhibit 5
- Michael J. Handel, BLS, Monthly Labor Review, July 2022: "Growth trends for selected occupations considered at risk from automation"
- Christine Machovec, Michael J. Rieley and Emily Rolen, BLS, Monthly Labor Review, February 2025: "Incorporating AI impacts in BLS employment projections: occupational case studies"
- Each row also names the exact sources for its own figures.