Worker anxiety increases to 27% over AI-related job displacement, report finds

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More workers are worried about technology taking their jobs.

Some 27% of US workers worry that technology could soon make their jobs obsolete, according to a new report from Gallup, up 7 percentage points from the same time last year, and more than double since Gallup first began asking the question back in 2017.

Younger workers are particularly concerned, with 34% of workers aged 18 to 44 worrying technology could make their jobs obsolete, compared with 19% of workers 45 and older. (Gallup in its polling also found that employees’ worries about those more traditional employment and income threats have remained largely unchanged over the last year.)

The rising anxiety around job stability in the age of widespread AI business transformation comes as execs have fingerpointed the burgeoning technology when explaining layoff decisions. Others suggested AI may be responsible for wiping out half of all white-collar work.

A popular AI layoffs tracker has recorded more than a quarter million layoffs due to AI since it began tracking in 2024.

Not so fast, suggests Gallup. The pollster in its report also noted that the technology’s overall effect on US employment “remains modest,” although there are signs of weaker hiring for some entry-level and junior roles in occupations more exposed to AI, correlating with the elevated concern amongst that cohort.

The Gallup opinion research comes as lawmakers, regulators, business leaders, and, well, nearly everyone else grapple with the impacts of rapid AI transformation and technological development, and growing concerns about the technology developing beyond human control.

Even AI executives—including CEOs Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic, and former government contractor slash world’s richest man Elon Musk—have called for a slower, more safety-conscious approach to developing increasingly powerful automated systems. Earlier this month, an Anthropic developer quit and openly critiqued the companies “gambling with our lives” by maturing models without adequate safety measures.

President Trump, via his own social media platform, dismissed calls to slow the growth of the technology, understand its risks and impacts, and build safeguards for society and humanity.

Even if the risk of an AI-powered extinction event is overblown (but like…how overblown?...asking for a friend), the technology remains poised to upend the workplace and how work gets done. Business leaders, economists, and technologists have also called for more understanding of those impacts and plans to address them.

“I don’t think any government is nearly as deep on this as they have to be,” said Bill Gates in an interview with Reuters. “Governments are way behind on this one.”