U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Department of Labor Logo United States Department of Labor
Dot gov

The .gov means it's official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Employment Projections
Bureau of Labor Statistics > Employment Projections > Publications > Factsheets

Artificial Intelligence (AI) impacts on employment projections

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment projections are prepared on an annual basis for 10 years in the future and cover about 800 detailed occupations across about 300 detailed industries. Numerous factors are researched and analyzed each projections cycle to determine the expected impact on future employment. Assessing potential impacts of new and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), is an area of focus for the BLS Employment Projections (EP) program. However, these analyses involve various levels of uncertainty about how emerging technologies will impact future employment.

This factsheet provides a deeper dive into the methodology used by the EP program and where to find additional information about the potential impact of AI on the most recent set of employment projections.

Methodology and assessing uncertainty

Employment projections are developed using historical data trends and relationships through the base year plus factoring in any likely future developments that may deviate from historical patterns. The projections focus on long-term structural trends in the economy and do not try to anticipate future business cycle activity. To meet this objective, specific assumptions are made about the labor force, macroeconomy, industry employment, and occupational employment. The projections are not intended to be a forecast of what the future will be but instead are a description of what would be expected to happen under these specific assumptions and circumstances. When these assumptions are not realized, actual values will differ from projections. 

BLS assumes that labor productivity and technological progress will be in line with the historical experience. That is, productivity will increase, and technology will progress, but because the BLS method involves analyzing historical relationships in the data and projecting them forward, the future is assumed to behave comparably to the past. This assumption has generally proven strong, in part because it can take time for employers and workers to figure out how to incorporate new technology into business practices. However, recent developments in AI have raised the prospect that the future rate of technological progress could be higher than in the past.

BLS researches factors that are expected to impact employment, particularly those which may not be reflected in historical data, such as new technologies. However, BLS generally applies adjustments based on this research conservatively, where there is convincing evidence for a change. EP table 1.12 provides a list of factors that are reflected in the projections.

Developments in AI are proceeding rapidly, and the uncertainty about potential impacts remains very high. Projections are always uncertain, and the exact impact of developments such as new technologies on the labor market 10 years out is impossible to predict with precision. As a result, BLS releases new projections annually to incorporate new data, research, and analysis.

Resources used by BLS

BLS has considered a wide variety of sources, including data and research from governmental agencies, professional or scholarly articles, and interviews with experts in the field, to survey likely areas of AI impact. Based off these estimated AI exposure impacts, EP staff have considered tasks and occupations for prioritized research. The research considered various types of AI, including large language models (LLMs), image and video generation, and agentic AI.

While some changes are expected to reach across the economy, most are concentrated in:

  • Computer and Mathematical (SOC 15)
  • Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media (SOC 27)
  • Various business administration (SOC 13, SOC 41, SOC 43)
  • Legal (NAICS 5411)

Not all these changes were new changes—some reflected expected changes stemming from technology, whereas others had persisting factors adjusted or removed.

For more information

Projections overview articles for the past several sets of employment projections data include discussion of potential AI impacts on employment.

EP staff detail the approach to incorporating potential AI impacts, with EP’s interpretation of information available as of June 2024, in the Incorporating AI impacts in BLS employment projections: occupational case studies article.

The EP program has more detail on its methodology and concepts in the BLS Handbook of Methods, Frequently Asked Questions page, and in the news release technical note. For additional information about the EP program, please contact us at (202) 691-5700 or ep-info@bls.gov.

Last modified date: August 27, 2026