23 December 2025

How Workers Will Adapt in the AI Era

Lareina Yee and Anu Madgavkar

Based on task-level analysis of over 800 occupations, a deep dive look at 6,800 skills, and expert surveys, our research team at the McKinsey Global Institute estimate that the tasks which fill more than half of all U.S. work hours can, in theory, be automated with technologies that already exist. The silver lining is that AI cannot—and will not—completely replace the jobs of the people who complete those tasks for a living. Instead, work will change, and workers will adapt.

More than 70% of the skills employers seek today are relevant in both automatable and non-automatable work. This means most human abilities will remain useful, but how and where they are applied will evolve. As AI takes on routine tasks—especially digital ones like data entry and information processing—people will focus more on what only humans can do: asking better questions, interpreting results, guiding machines, and exercising judgment. The speed of technological change will make adaptability the ultimate human superpower.

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