YouGov: nearly half of employed Americans expect AI to shrink jobs in their industry

A YouGov survey of 1,098 US adults, fielded 8–10 August 2024, found that 48% of employed Americans expected artificial intelligence to reduce the number of jobs available in their industry, the highest figure the pollster had recorded since it began asking the question. The share had climbed steadily across four surveys: 29% in March 2023, 41% that July, 43% in March 2024, and 48% by August 2024, tracking roughly eighteen months of rising public exposure to generative AI following ChatGPT’s launch.

The survey distinguished between abstract industry-wide expectations and personal experience. Among employed respondents, 34% said they were very or somewhat concerned about losing their own job or facing pay cuts because of AI, with 10% very concerned; 63% reported little or no personal worry. Actual reported displacement remained rare: only 2% of employed Americans said they had personally experienced job loss attributable to AI, and 71% said they were not aware of anyone who had.

The gap between rising anticipatory concern and minimal reported harm was the survey’s most notable feature. It suggested that, through mid-2024, public anxiety about AI and employment was running well ahead of any measurable labour-market effect that respondents could point to directly — consistent with broader debate at the time about whether AI’s impact on jobs was being anticipated faster than it was materialising, or whether early effects were simply not yet visible to workers experiencing them.

The poll offered no data on which industries respondents expected to be hit hardest, nor did it distinguish between job losses from automation and other economic factors respondents might have attributed to AI.