Bank of America says 60% of today's jobs didn't exist in 1940
Bank of America, the massive national bank, says AI panic is overblown.
The short version
- Sixty percent of current American jobs did not exist in 1940.
- History shows new technology creates more roles than it destroys.
- Adaptability is your new job security in a shifting market.
As fears of an artificial intelligence jobs apocalypse intensify across offices and boardrooms, Bank of America, the massive national bank, is urging a reality check. In a report published on April 28, Bank of America economists argue that the Armageddon narrative around artificial intelligence sits uneasily with both economic theory and the evidence so far, according to Fortune.
The bank backs this up with 85 years of labor market data, pointing out that 60% of the jobs that exist in the United States today did not exist in 1940. Data scientists and social media managers barely existed 20 years ago but are now mainstream jobs.
Agriculture, which employed roughly 40% of Americans in the early 1900s, now accounts for just 1% of U.S. employment. The report concludes that adaptability is the new job security. Globally, roughly 840 million jobs, about one in four, are exposed to generative artificial intelligence, with high-income economies facing the steepest exposure at 33% of all jobs.
Younger workers and white-collar roles face the greatest disruption risk. However, the bank draws a sharp distinction between exposure and elimination, citing International Labor Organization data showing 13% of global jobs sit in the augmentation category where technology enhances workers rather than replaces them.
Bank of America chief executive officer Brian Moynihan leads the institution that put out the numbers. When automated teller machines arrived, banks opened more branches and redeployed tellers into sales. The open question is whether cheaper professional work will unlock new demand or replace workers outright. You do not need to panic about your office workflow just yet.
Photo: No machine-readable author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
