According to the Generative AI and the future of work in America report by the McKinsey Centre for Government, 12 million occupational transitions will be needed by 2030 due to automation replacing almost a third (30%) of working hours in the US economy. 

The US leads the world in investment, innovation, and implementation of AI tools, hosting some of the biggest names in the field on its soil like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. While the UK was dethroned from third place by Singapore in this year’s Global AI Index, it remains a global leader and will continue to feel AI’s societal shifts like other leading countries. 

Women are at higher risk of being displaced by automation due to them making up a larger proportion of office support and customer service roles, according to the report. This makes them 1.5 times more likely to have to transition to a new job than their male counterparts. 

The report shows office support and customer service could shrink by 3.7m and 2m workers respectively. At the same time, the highest paying job quintile is expected to grow by approximately 3.8m. 

The widespread adoption of AI will also lead to low-wage workers being 14 times more likely to need to change their occupations. As the report highlighted, lower paid occupations are predominantly held by people of colour and women through structures of inequity that make attaining higher education or higher paid positions more difficult. 

Despite the potential workforce losses, AI has the opportunity to drive domestic productivity growth by three to four percent by 2030.

“However, this will require significant action from stakeholders across the public and private sector. Workers will need support in learning new skills, and other risks associated with generative AI also need to be mitigated and controlled,” says the study. 

To address the forthcoming challenges, the report urges the implementation of training programmes from industry groups, educational providers, and non-profits to help disadvantaged workers transition to better paying, in demand jobs. 

The study urges employers to reconsider their hiring practices to attract and retain workers outside of their usual pool of candidates. The study shows that skills learned through work experience can be a bigger determinant of success than a formal education, and that around 60% of US workers have significant skills through experience without a college degree. 

According to the report, a method employers could use to determine the digital skills of a candidate without a degree could be via a digital learning and employment record, which is a digital passport of sorts that documents how an individual worker acquired skills, and how they translate across companies over time. 

Opening up hiring opportunities to a wider group, mixed with the implementation of job-specific training programmes, would ease labour shortages impacting sectors like STEM.

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Being more flexible with your workers can also help recruit demographics that are often overlooked, like elderly workers. Research from the Flexibility Works show that reskilling older workers would make a significant impact on our own labour shortages, and the best way to cater to them would be to offer more flexible work arrangements.

That could look like a reduction in hours overall, flexible start and finish times, or a compressed work week, where they work the same amount of hours in less days. These benefits could also extend to people – particularly women – in care-taking positions, and help them enter more male-dominated fields with skills-shortages. 

This report should serve as a reminder businesses and policy makers that implement AI, to look at the wider impact their decisions make, as well as how this technology can be used to create a job market that works for more people.