“How about we have a chew and talk about it?” My dad was a welder when I was born, but he later started selling Ford trucks to farmers, and that was his opening line. He used to tell me that they paid him to fill out paperwork, but he talked to people for free. AI will take some jobs, but the important jobs where people are needed to talk to others will always be staffed by humans. This week’s article looks at the shifting job market as AI competes for jobs.
I recently listened to an interview with Sander van ’t Noordende, CEO of Randstad, where he discussed which jobs AI would start taking. AI will disrupt the job market, but some areas more than others. He began by saying there is no evidence that AI is significantly impacting the job market. Even though unemployment is at historically low levels and has been since COVID, the cause isn’t AI.
Let’s start with the negative: jobs he said will be impacted by AI. Currently, AI innovation is reducing the need for administrative jobs, clerks, accounting clerks, finance clerks, marketing, design, content creation, and customer service in call centers or chat-based work. There are fewer and fewer of these jobs because one employee can now do the work of two or three people using AI systems.
Which jobs are safe? The safest jobs are human-centric roles that require split-second decisions, ethical reasoning, or personal relationships. Examples include doctors, firefighters, paramedics, engineers, business managers, business leaders who negotiate, businesspeople who do sales, and everything in logistics, whether driving the trucks that support e-commerce like Amazon or working in their warehouses. Obviously, the service industry needs people because everyone hates ordering their lunch from a kiosk. Service industry jobs that are safe from AI are cooks, bartenders, hotel staff, nurses, home‑care aides, physical therapists, counselors, pastors, and mechanics.
Which jobs is AI creating more demand? Strangely enough, software developers and the trades. You might think that because ChatGPT and Claude can do everything, software developers wouldn’t be needed. While those AI systems can do most things, they’ve increased demand for software developers because there’s still a lot of automation to do. There is a strong need for more software engineers who can use AI systems to do applications that were out of reach before, but are now possible. There is also a huge need for the commercial construction trades to build and maintain the data centers and other technological buildouts. That requires electricians, linemen, plumbers, maintenance engineers, HVAC technicians, power plant workers, and others to build the buildings that support all this technology.
Bill Gates famously wrote an essay a couple of years ago saying AI will eventually take almost all our jobs within the decade. Noordende doesn’t think that will happen for a few reasons, because a job isn’t just a task. AI can do tasks, but most jobs are more than tasks; they involve interacting with customers and convincing customers to move in a certain direction. AI can do tasks, but it can’t move organizations forward. People will always be needed, and the jobs with the most people interaction are the safest.
One of my best friends owns a manufacturing company. He tells me that the safest jobs at his company are those where people use AI every day to become more efficient. He believes those people will continue to become more proficient with AI and more valuable to him. I continually tell my team and my kids the same thing: lean into AI at every chance you get and become so familiar with it that it feels like a third hand. It isn’t going away, so we need to learn to not just live with it but thrive with it.
I lost my dad two years ago this week, and I miss him. I thought about how, at our firm’s recent open house and ribbon cutting, he would have set up shop in the lobby and had a grand old time talking with everyone. He was the most “peoplely” guy I knew. He could put people at ease in the first few seconds and be their friend in a minute. AI will never do that.
Miss you, Dad.
Richard
www.FerventWM.com
This article was written by humans for humans because AI doesn’t have this quality of sarcasm.
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