There’s one group of workers that could be in for a particularly rough time as AI becomes more integrated into the economy.
Murat Tasci, a senior US economist at JPMorgan, thinks AI is poised to replace a vast swath of white-collar knowledge workers — office workers, in other words, who have “non-routine cognitive occupations,” the bank wrote in a note to clients last week.
The result could be a “jobless recovery” in the labor market — a situation where white-collar knowledge workers face a structurally higher risk of unemployment as growth in their sector remains feeble, Tasci said.
The shift could also pose a huge risk to the overall economy, Tasci suggested, given that white-collar knowledge workers account for around 45% of all household employment in the US.
“A much larger unemployment risk and anemic recovery prospects for these workers might cause the next labor market downturn to look pretty dismal,” Tasci wrote, speculating that policy makers may need to significantly ease monetary policy or inject the economy with stimulus as workers adjust to changes in the job market.
The idea that AI could be taking away some white-collar jobs has been on Wall Street’s radar for a while, but there are signs that the trend may already be beginning to play out in some areas of the job market, Tasci said, such as for entry-level workers.
The rising jobless rate among recent college graduates is related to the hype for AI, JPMorgan said previously.
