Artificial intelligence is poised to disrupt millions of American jobs, but history suggests the workforce will adapt rather than collapse.
On a recent episode of Goldman Sachs’ Exchanges podcast, Joseph Briggs, head of the global economics team at Goldman Sachs Research, predicted that AI adoption will displace roughly 9% of the US workforce—equivalent to 15 million workers. These individuals will likely be forced to leave their current roles and transition into new positions.
The Immediate Impact vs. The Historical Reality
The footprint of AI is already measurable. In highly exposed industries like tech, management consulting, and graphic design, Briggs estimates that AI is shaving 10,000 to 15,000 jobs from monthly employment growth.
However, Briggs pushes back against the doomsday predictions of permanent unemployment, arguing that critics focus too heavily on job destruction while ignoring job creation.
The 85% Rule: Historically, technological innovation is a net positive for employment. Over the last 80 years, roughly 85% of job growth has come from entirely new positions created by tech.
Natural Labor Market Churn: The US labor market is incredibly dynamic, creating about 30 million jobs and destroying 29 million every single year.
The Reabsorption Rate: Briggs notes that a mere 5% increase in the baseline pace of job creation would be more than enough to fully reabsorb every worker displaced by AI.
Why the AI Transition Might Be a "Rising Tide," Not a "Crashing Wave"
Sharing the podcast stage, MIT’s Neil Thompson offered a more conservative timeline for the AI revolution. He argues that just because an AI can do a job doesn't mean it immediately will.
Thompson points to two major hurdles slowing down widespread adoption:
Data Access & Privacy: In heavily regulated fields like medicine, privacy laws make it incredibly difficult to train and deploy AI systems effectively.
Economic Viability: Implementing and running complex AI systems must be cheaper than human labor to justify the corporate investment.
The GPS Analogy: Thompson suggests most jobs will be partially automated rather than erased. When GPS technology automated a taxi driver's need for deep route memorization, driver wages fell, but the total number of driving jobs exploded.
Ultimately, Thompson views AI as a predictable "rising tide" that workers can see coming and adapt to, rather than a catastrophic "crashing wave."
Context: A Cooling Labor Market
This debate comes at a sensitive time for the US economy. The June jobs report revealed a sharp slowdown in hiring, with the economy adding just 57,000 jobs—about half of what economists forecasted. Additionally, employment figures for April and May were revised downward by a combined 74,000.
While the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.2%, the drop was primarily driven by workers exiting the labor force altogether. Whether these cooling numbers represent the early friction of an AI transition or a broader economic slowdown remains to be seen.