AI and automation could erase 10.4 million US roles by 2030

AI-pocalypse AI and automation could wipe out 6.1 percent of jobs in the US by 2030 - equating to 10.4 million fewer positions that are held by humans today.

This is according to Forrester veep and principal analyst J.P. Gownder, who states in a blog: "To give you a sense of the magnitude, the US lost 8.7 million jobs during the Great Recession. The numbers aren't directly comparable, since jobs lost to AI are structural and permanent while those lost during a recession are cyclical and macroeconomic. But no matter how you view it, the numbers are meaningful and worthy of our attention."

The US population has also grown since the early part of this century, further muddying the waters when talking about absolute numbers.

The "real but modest impact" that Forrester models between 2025 and 2030 suggests that the replacement of large chunks of the workforce remains unlikely, "as labor productivity would need to accelerate significantly for AI to replace human talent at scale."

The more realistic scenario, it says, is that AI will "augment" one in five roles at the end of the forecast period, indicating employers may need to invest in staff training to prepare them for a new age.

In the tech world, some of the SaaS providers are already making moves to replace parts of the workforce, including Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow.

Still, risks remain. Forrester says there is a danger that "over-automating roles" based on the "hype surrounding" AI can result in "costly pullbacks, damaged reputations, and weakened employee experiences."

Some businesses - Duolingo and Klarna spring to mind - rowed back their efforts to replace meatbags with AI. Forrester last year said it expects 55 percent of corporations to regret the decision to press ahead with these types of projects and quietly rehire people.

Forrester today cites a million US layoffs in 2025 with some attributed to AI. Gownder recalls discussions with clients that want advice on laying off 20 percent of their staff in the lurch toward AI.

"When we ask if they have a mature, vetted AI app ready to fill in those jobs, nine out of ten times, the answer is no - and they haven't even started. So most of the layoffs are financially driven and AI is just the scapegoat, at least today."

So what has changed since Forrester's previous AI jobs forecast in 2023? Agentic AI has hit the market, and organizations are using it to create applications Forrester claims are more accurate - though not according to everyone - and solve specific problems.

Generative AI projects, both successes and failures, are also teaching the market how to get better results, Gownder says.

"Where our earlier forecast saw just 29 percent of US jobs lost to automation coming from GenAI, that number is now 50 percent, which accounts for agentic AI solutions that leverage GenAI as well."

As for the 20 percent of positions that will be influenced by AI, this "represents a nearly fourfold increase compared with our 2023 forecast."

All of which means that while jobs will be going, "we're not heading for an imminent AI job apocalypse." AI might take over some workflows and tasks, but in the next five years, Forrester thinks that work will be mostly undertaken by humans. ®