AI Anxiety: Jobs Lost, Skills Needed 🤖🔥

Tech & Science

Image: Envato

Artificial intelligence’s integration into workplaces is sparking a notable shift in the UK’s labor markets, with a growing number of young people rejecting traditional white-collar careers in favor of skilled trades. Fueled by anxieties surrounding potential AI-driven job losses, this countertrend is gaining momentum. According to a recent Reuters report, many students who previously pursued white-collar paths are now gravitating toward manual professions they perceive as resistant to automation. The story of Maryna Yaroshenko, an 18-year-old plumbing student in London, illustrates this trend; she firmly believes that “No AI can do plumbing.” This sentiment aligns with broader national concerns, as half of UK adults express worry about AI’s impact on their jobs, with individuals aged 25 to 35 exhibiting the highest levels of anxiety. Furthermore, evidence of businesses rapidly adopting AI to replace human staff is mounting. In the United States alone, companies have reported 48,414 AI-linked job cuts this year, including 31,000 in October, as documented by the *Los Angeles Times*. Technology giants, including Amazon, IBM, and ServiceNow, are increasingly leveraging AI, and this trend is being amplified by concrete job losses.

Streamlining operations and reducing staffing requirements are central to the restructuring efforts being undertaken by Lufthansa and ING, with both companies citing automation and digitalization as key drivers in the planned elimination of thousands of positions. Executives increasingly view artificial intelligence as a crucial tool for achieving cost savings; ServiceNow’s CEO, for instance, describes AI agents as “workers who don’t need any lunch” and incur no healthcare expenses. However, the scale and timing of these AI-linked layoffs highlight the increasing integration of artificial intelligence and automation into workforce restructuring strategies, particularly for roles involving repetitive, administrative, or high-volume tasks. Academic research from King’s College London corroborates these trends, finding that companies with highly exposed workforces experienced an average job reduction of 4.5% between 2021 and 2025, with junior roles shrinking by 5.8%. Roles within trades, machine operations, and administration have proven particularly vulnerable. Despite predictions that overall employment will grow, largely within professional and higher-skilled positions, this imbalance presents a significant challenge. Workers displaced by these changes may struggle to transition into these new roles, and the decline in entry-level positions could further complicate efforts to train future talent, particularly within sectors like sales and customer-facing roles, which demonstrated greater resilience according to the King’s College study.

A slight uptick in job postings has been observed, and students like Yaroshenko exemplify an intriguing trend emerging in the AI era. Specifically, the labor market’s transformation by intelligent machines suggests that careers emphasizing a human element may prove most future-proof. Recent AI-driven layoffs have prompted a shift among UK students toward vocational training and trades.