New Report: AI Will Devastate Jobs in Legal, Architectural and Admin Services Over the Next 5 Years

New Report: AI Will Devastate Jobs in Legal, Architectural and Admin Services Over the Next 5 Years

 

A sobering report from Goldman Sachs paints a bleak picture for the future of many white-collar jobs in the next five years.

According to Goldman's report, "Apart from tech workers, others in the knowledge and creative sectors, such as management consultants, call center workers, and graphic designers, have also seen some displacement of their labor by AI, but these are relatively small parts of the overall job market. As yet, no significant AI-led changes in the employment mix across the whole US economy have shown up in labor data."

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Globally, around 300 million jobs are exposed to AI automation. In the US, AI can potentially automate tasks that account for 25% of all work hours, according to Joseph Briggs, who co-leads the global economics team in Goldman Sachs Research.

For nearly every white-collar sector, the numbers are sobering.

Administrators — office managers and similar positions — are expected to take the biggest hit.

 

 

Other recent analyses are somewhat similar to Goldman's analysis.

“But for many tech workers, the shake-up has already begun. Salesforce eliminated 4,000 customer support roles last year, citing efficiency gains from its agentic AI product. Goldman Sachs and Hewlett-Packard have made similar moves, with HP stating its AI initiatives will result in as many as 6,000 job cuts by 2028. Meanwhile, Duolingo announced it would stop using human contractors for work AI can handle, and that it is only hiring for positions that cannot be further automated. And Klarna, which shed 40 percent of its workforce due to an AI-motivated hiring freeze, expects to trim another 33 percent of its staff by 2030,” according to a report in Builtin.com.

 

AI Taketh and Gives It

Ironically, some areas that will see growth are those jobs tied to the construction of new data centers to support AI's growth. 

"Relative to trend, the hiring for HVAC contractors, electrical contractors, and other workers to build data centers has risen. Construction jobs exposed to the data center build-out have increased by 216,000 since 2022. “And we expect that data center investment will continue to grow,” said Briggs.
 

 

The Storm Has Been Coming

The build-up over the past few years is finally hitting.

In 2018, GoLocal started examining the impacts of AI.

A survey conducted by the Brookings Institution in 2018 found that Americans are worried about the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs and personal privacy.

The survey was led by Vice President Darrell West in coordination with his book, “The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation.” He appeared on GoLocal to discuss the future impact of the technology.

“When asked about the employment impact, 12 percent indicated they thought artificial intelligence would create jobs, 13 percent believed it would have no effect on jobs, 38 percent said it would reduce jobs, and 37 percent didn’t know or gave no answer,” said West, who once headed the Taubman Center at Brown University.

COVID may have delayed the onslaught, but every indication is that the AI movement is beginning to take hold.