AI is starting to replace jobs long considered safe: professional office-based positions. Major CEOs envision a dramatic shift in how we work.
"Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the United States," Ford CEO Jim Farley said in June.
That same month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said AI "is going to be the most transformative technology in our lifetime."
A future with AI co-workers may soon be the norm, according to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. "We're the last generation of CEOs to only manage humans," Benioff said during the tech giant's February earnings call.
Using generative AI to take on or speed up tedious tasks could make tech and other workers more productive. For elite AI talent, compensation is skyrocketing, with Meta Platforms reportedly offering $100 million pay deals.
But overall, companies may need fewer employees. That's hitting college graduates trying to get their foot in the door. Unemployment of recent computer science grads is more than double that of art history majors.
AI Impact On White-Collar Jobs
The AI revolution is already changing how we work. From coding to customer service, sales to creative jobs, experts warn that AI is disrupting nearly every white-collar field.
"Our thesis back then (in 2018) was that 50% of white-collar jobs could probably be replaced by AI in the next decade or two," Doug Clinton, CEO of AI-powered asset manager Intelligent Alpha, told Investor's Business Daily.
"We're starting to see the early signs of that, and now I actually think it could be more like 80%."
Clinton is co-founder of Deepwater Asset Management, a venture capital firm backing early-stage tech companies. He has been investing in AI for nearly a decade and says the threat of AI job losses is very real.
"For most white-collar workers, if AI isn't already better at the person's job today, it will be in the next two or three years," Clinton said.
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AI Taking Over Jobs
For Mark Quinn, this isn't theory. It already happened. Quinn is now the senior director of AI operations at Pearl, an AI-powered search engine backed by human experts.
Before that, he held leadership roles at Alphabet-owned Waymo, Apple and LinkedIn. But it was at the health tech startup DeepScribe, where Quinn oversaw AI operations, that he helped automate the very job he was hired to do. Then he was laid off.
"It was more of a silent shift," Quinn told IBD. "We literally watched the work disappear on the dashboard."
He used AI to streamline his workflow, until there was no work left to do.
"I did it to myself," Quinn said. "That's the most ironic part of the story. If you're wondering if AI is coming, stop wondering. It is. It's here."
Quinn isn't alone. Companies across industries are using AI to cut costs and shrink head counts.
At Microsoft, artificial intelligence saved more than $500 million in 2024 and boosted sales by 9%. AI now writes over a third of all new software code at the software giant. Microsoft in July announced it would cut 9,000 jobs in its latest round of layoffs.
What Jobs Will AI Replace? What Jobs Are AI-Proof?
A Microsoft study in late July analyzed how generative AI is impacting different occupations based on real-world user interactions with its Copilot assistant.
Researchers looked at 200,000 anonymous conversations and mapped what people were asking AI to do and what the AI actually did to real job tasks.
That helped them figure out how often AI is helping or taking over parts of the work, how well it's doing and how widely those tasks apply across different roles.
The 40 jobs most threatened by AI were nearly all office work. They included historians, translators and customer service agents. These roles earned the highest "AI applicability scores" based on their overlap with common Copilot use cases.
In contrast, the 40 jobs least affected by AI include roofers, maids and tire repairers.
Rising AI Use Disrupts Job Market
In May, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told the Wall Street Journal that the tech giant replaced hundreds of human resource workers with AI but in turn hired more programmers and salespeople.
At Lyft, human support agents used to read each support ticket, search knowledge bases and type responses. Now, an AI system instantly pulls from past interactions and policy data to generate replies, cutting the time it takes to solve rider and driver support issues by 87%.
Similarly, Wendy's FreshAi handles tens of thousands of drive-thru orders daily. By using AI to understand diverse accents and complex requests, it lets employees spend more time on in-person customer care.
A new statistic from METR, a nonprofit independent research outlet, says the complexity of tasks that AI can handle has doubled every seven months since 2019. The technology is learning how to do longer, harder jobs at an exponential speed.
According to Stanford's 2025 AI Index Report, 78% of global companies used AI in 2024, up from 55% just a year earlier.
Is AI Replacing Jobs Of College Graduates?
Quinn says U.S. education is behind the curve. "Our academic institutions and the way that we are training people still is for a world that no longer exists," he said.
"It's as if we are still teaching everybody how to do whatever the subject is in the year 2010 without using a computer. No one would go to that school, no one would go to that class. U.S. education has not caught up. We are behind," Quinn said.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios in May that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10% to 20% in the next one to five years.
"What some companies are bucketing as entry-level work is exactly the sort of stuff that is opportunistic for AI," Quinn said.
Recent college graduates had a 4.8% unemployment rate in June, above the 4.2% for the overall workforce, according to New York Fed data.
Historically, recent college grads had significantly lower unemployment vs. all workers, but that started to flip in 2018-19. That gap has widened over the past four years.
Young male college grads are now jobless at the same rate as nongrads, a Financial Times analysis found.
What AI Means For Entry-Level Jobs
However, Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer at Handshake, is more optimistic about AI's impact on entry-level jobs. Handshake is a career platform for Gen Z that connects millions of college students and employers.
"Entry-level jobs will not be completely eliminated. However, I do believe entry-level jobs will be redefined," Cruzvergara told IBD.
New hires will be expected to use generative AI to support their work.
"Entry-level employees will need to know how to supplement or augment their work with gen AI. And I believe that as a result, employers will have higher expectations," Cruzvergara said.
"The benefit to an entry-level worker is that by using gen AI, you actually will free yourself up to have more time to do some of the higher-level work. And so there's a positive way to actually look at this evolution," she said.
In the long run, Gen Z workers may have an advantage over older workers who haven't embraced AI.
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AI Impact On Current Job Market
But the job market is getting tougher in the here and now. Cruzvergara pointed to a 15% decline in job postings on Handshake since last year. Meantime, applications are up 30%.
"It is a volatile economy at the moment. AI is a factor, but it's certainly not the only factor," Cruzvergara said.
Some companies aren't just experimenting with AI; they're rewriting the rules of hiring. At Shopify, managers must prove AI can't do the job before hiring a new person.
Duolingo is going even further, using AI across hiring, performance reviews and staffing decisions. In some cases, the language-learning platform is replacing contractors with code.
Will AI Decrease Software Engineering Jobs?
Among college majors, computer science and engineering grads age 22 to 27 face some of the highest unemployment rates at 6.1% and 7.5%, the New York Fed reports. That's more than double the 3% for biology and art history majors.
And tech layoffs are running at near-record levels for the second year in a row, with more companies citing AI as the reason for cuts. According to the tech job site TrueUp, more than 130,000 tech jobs have been eliminated in 2025 so far, following more than 238,000 cuts last year.
Yotpo shows how fast AI is replacing jobs. The Israel-founded e-commerce platform — which serves brands like Steve Madden, Ikea and Patagonia — has cut about 34% of its staff. The company says the layoffs are part of a push to become a profitable, product-focused business around an AI-first strategy.
"I truly believe that tomorrow's companies will be smaller, more focused and much more AI-based ... and we must put ourselves in this reality," Yotpo CEO Tomer Tagrin said, according to CTECH.
SignalFire, a VC firm that tracks hiring trends, released its 2025 State of Talent Report in May showing that new grad hiring in tech has plunged more than 50% from pre-pandemic levels. Big Tech now fills just 7% of roles with recent graduates, down from 25% from 2024. Startups are under 6%. Even top computer science grads are seeing fewer offers, with hires at Magnificent Seven companies cut by more than half since 2022.
Some of that hiring decline reflects the end of job hoarding. Tech titans had been reluctant to cut surplus staff for fear of a labor shortage. But as job cuts got rolling, those fears faded, spurring more layoffs.
College Majors' Employment Prospects
| Major | Unemployment rate | Median wage early career | Median wage midcareer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Computer Engineering | 7.5% | $80,000 | $122,000 |
| Computer Science | 6.1% | $80,000 | $115,000 |
| Economics | 4.9% | $70,000 | $110,000 |
| Finance | 3.7% | $70,000 | $110,000 |
| Philosophy | 3.2% | $48,000 | $72,000 |
| Art History | 3.0% | $45,000 | $71,000 |
| Nursing | 1.4% | $65,000 | $84,000 |
| Overall | 3.60% | $55,000 | $83,000 |
Source: New York Fed, based on 2023 data
Advertising Industry AI: Wake-Up Call For White-Collar Workers
Creative industries are being reshaped, too. Geoff Colon spent nearly a decade leading Microsoft's Brand Studio, later joined Dell and today runs seven companies of his own. He says it's all possible because of AI.
"The iceberg has already struck," Colon told IBD. "The ad industry has been on cruise control for 40 years. It's only a matter of time before most of the water comes on board the ship."
Meta says it will fully automate ad creation by the end of 2026. Just upload a photo of your product, and AI will handle the rest: image, video, captions, budget and even who sees the ad.
"I think it's a very, very big deal," Colon said. "I saw an all-AI ad run during the NBA playoffs. I could tell it's all AI, but other people couldn't."
'Cheat On Everything' AI Startup
AI may be taking over jobs, but it can create job opportunities too. Among members of Gen Z, some are already flipping the system on its head. Take Roy Lee, the 21-year-old founder of viral AI startup Cluely.
"I think for the next few years, the ability to develop with AI is probably the highest-leverage skill that you can possibly have," Lee told IBD
Lee was suspended from Columbia after posting a video of himself, using an AI tool he built, during an Amazon job interview. Lee said Amazon flagged the video to Columbia, warning the school it could impact future hiring. The university suspended him for a year. But instead of backing down, Lee built a business on it.
"We're the 'cheat on everything' company today," Lee said. "But in a few very short years, we'll just be the AI assistant that helps you."
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"Pretty much all legal work can be automated today if you just have enough workflows coded in. Construction back-office work can be automated away," Lee said.
He pointed to restaurant paperwork, managerial overhead, payroll, job interviews and recruiting as other examples.
"Literally the only thing that has to change is we have to wait long enough for someone to build the companies that do automate these things. The lack of morality is not in the users but rather the institutions that prevent the users from using it," Lee claimed.
Despite some backlash, Silicon Valley is buying in. VC firm Andreessen Horowitz in June led a $15 million round of funding for Cluely.
Risks Of AI Replacing Jobs Now
While some startups are pushing full speed ahead, some companies are hitting the brakes. Klarna, a pioneer of the "buy now, pay later" payment method, found out what happens when automation moves too fast.
The financial technology giant cut 40% of its workforce by automating customer service. But when satisfaction dropped, it brought humans back.
"I think in terms of where humans still have impact, it's going to be in customer service and sales," Clinton said. "Human-to-human stuff. That's where the best talent will be able to command a premium."
Teresa Heitsenrether, who is leading JPMorgan's AI rollout, put it bluntly to the Wall Street Journal. When asked if there was any specific area where she's seeing good returns on her AI investment, she said, "I would turn it around. I can't think of a business where that's not true."
What Workers Are Saying About AI Taking Over Jobs
Are workers worried that AI will take their jobs? IBD hit the streets of New York City to find out. One New Yorker and recent graduate said he wants to work in a hospital helping people emotionally and with their mental health.
"I'm not too worried," he said. "People need each other to talk to, not an AI or a software. With the job that I'm looking for, it looks for compassion and empathy, and I don't think AI can replace that."
Another New Yorker who works in finance said he's fine with AI making his coffee, but not managing his money. "Barista? Sure. Banker? I still want a human checking the figures," he said.
He added that he's not worried right now about his job being replaced by AI because he deals with in-person interactions. "At the end of the day, people still want to do business with people."
"If you're not ready to pivot and adapt, you will become obsolete," Cruzvergara said. "But it's not because AI took it. It's because someone who knew AI took it."
According to Quinn, "the most important thing you can do is get in the game. Reskill yourself. Learn. If you don't have a GPT Plus subscription already, or Gemini or whatever, you're behind."
As AI continues to evolve, the question isn't just if AI will replace jobs but how quickly and which roles are most at risk.
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