What do people across the globe think AI will do to the labor market?<\/p>\n
A global Pew Research Center poll<\/a> released on Thursday found that in 34 out of 37 countries, the most common answer was \u201cfewer jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n Across a 37-country median, 46% of respondents predicted fewer jobs, 13% said it wouldn\u2019t make much difference, and just 9% anticipated more jobs. Roughly a quarter said they weren\u2019t sure. The only country where more people thought AI would create more jobs than it eliminates was Nigeria (27% vs 26%), though \u201cnot sure\u201d beat out \u201cfewer jobs\u201d by considerable margins in Thailand (49% vs 32%) and the Philippines (54% vs 26%).<\/p>\n Pew identified a clear trend towards pessimism in countries with higher GDP, perhaps reflecting fears about the automation of white-collar work and\/or an AI-induced collapse in wages. In the U.S., 71% of respondents predicted fewer jobs, up from 64% just two years ago.<\/p>\n Young adults also appeared to report the most anxiety about AI\u2019s impact on the job market in both high- and middle-income countries, Pew reported, although this trend was not universal. Pew noted that high earners and the educated were more likely to predict job loss (at least in middle-income countries), though that\u2019s because lower earners and the less formally educated were more likely to answer \u201cnot sure,\u201d as opposed to having a more positive outlook.<\/p>\n \u201cThe share of adults who say they are more concerned than excited about the technology has gone up since last year in Sweden (+9 percentage points), Poland (+8), the Netherlands (+7), Hungary (+6) and Australia (+4),\u201d Pew noted.<\/p>\n Respondents who described their overall ideological leanings as closer to the left than right tended to be more pessimistic than their conservative counterparts on inequality. Pew found one of the widest ideological gaps of any of the 34 nations included in this part of the poll in the U.S., where liberals were 31% more likely to fear rising inequality than right-wingers.<\/p>\n AI\u2019s actual impact on the job market so far is unclear, although that may just be because it\u2019s too early to tell. Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research experts found the overall consequences<\/a> for the U.S. labor market had been marginal in work published July 2026, although AI may already be contributing to a harsher environment for recent graduates. Of course, Silicon Valley firms driving the frontier edge of AI haven\u2019t done themselves any favors on the popularity front by relentlessly scaremongering<\/a> as a marketing tactic and promising customers huge savings via mass layoffs.<\/p>\n