AI May Not Impact Tech-Sector Employment, Projects US Department of Labor (investopedia.com) 30
America's Labor Department includes the fact-finding Bureau of Labor Statistics — and they recently explained how AI impacts their projections for the next 10 years. Their conclusion, writes Investopedia, was that "tech workers might not have as much to worry about as one might think."
Employment in the professional, scientific, and technical services sector is forecast to increase by 10.5% from 2023 to 2033, more than double the national average. According to the BLS, the impact AI will have on tech-sector employment is highly uncertain. For one, AI is adept at coding and related tasks. But at the same time, as digital systems become more advanced and essential to day-to-day life, more software developers, data managers, and the like are going to be needed to manage those systems. "Although it is always possible that AI-induced productivity improvements will outweigh continued labor demand, there is no clear evidence to support this conjecture," according to BLS researchers.
Their employment projections through 2033 predict the fastest-growing sector within the tech industry will be computer system design, while the fastest-growing occupation will be data scientist.
And they also project that from 2023 through 2033 AI will "primarily affect occupations whose core tasks can be most easily replicated by GenAI in its current form." So over those 10 years they project a 4.7% drop in employment of medical transcriptionists and a 5.0% drop in employment of customer service representatives. Other occupations also may see AI impacts, although not to the same extent. For instance, computer occupations may see productivity impacts from AI, but the need to implement and maintain AI infrastructure could in actuality boost demand for some occupations in this group.
They also project decreasing employment for paralegals, but with actual lawyers being "less affected."
Their employment projections through 2033 predict the fastest-growing sector within the tech industry will be computer system design, while the fastest-growing occupation will be data scientist.
And they also project that from 2023 through 2033 AI will "primarily affect occupations whose core tasks can be most easily replicated by GenAI in its current form." So over those 10 years they project a 4.7% drop in employment of medical transcriptionists and a 5.0% drop in employment of customer service representatives. Other occupations also may see AI impacts, although not to the same extent. For instance, computer occupations may see productivity impacts from AI, but the need to implement and maintain AI infrastructure could in actuality boost demand for some occupations in this group.
They also project decreasing employment for paralegals, but with actual lawyers being "less affected."
But... (Score:2, Insightful)
The pollution generated by all the people wasting energy on this AI bullshit will impact everyone. Make the world worse for profit so you can afford to shield your child from learning about all this shitty things you do for, right?
Re: But...BIZX is paid to spew Al bullshit (Score:2)
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You're asking the wrong question. That's like asking what CowboyNeal has done to anyone. You can think of rsilvergun as being the lobotomized edition. It's not a grudge, or as rsilvergun calls it "living rent free in your head", rather he's just a random punchline. CowboyNeal is when you're punching up, rsilvergun is when you're punching down.
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The Cowboi Kneel jokes also got downmods back in the day.
I beg to differ (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I beg to differ (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, it's pretty amazing. I use it too. But it's still far from being able to displace developers. The ones it can displace, won't be missed anyway.
Your example is small, it's a new piece of software you came up with over a few days. Most of us work with software that has been developed over many years, even decades. These things are complex beasts. AI can't even begin to digest all the code, much less do something intelligent with it. It's going to take humans to write anything non-trivial, for quite some time.
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Re:I beg to differ (Score:4, Interesting)
No, that's not why, in fact they're still built to this day. GP is right, you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. It's actually entertaining to watch AI try to write something even remotely complex. Even when you ask it to do something simple, the more code it needs to spit out, the more it fucks it up. It's actually fundamental problem with generative AI, very closely related to why you can't stop it from hallucinating. It won't even replace junior developers any time soon. The only reason you'd say something like this is if you either A) Don't understand software development B) Don't understand the problems inherent in LLMs.
The amount of faith that laypeople put into LLMs is insane. Even after that first, widely reported fiasco where some law firm got into trouble for using AI to submit legal briefs and it generated bogus case law, we've seen more lawyers make the same stupid mistake multiple times. What's worse is these lawyers could have at least verified that the cases cited actually existed because they can at least read English, but they didn't even do that. What makes you think a middle-manager PHB with no programming skills is going to be able to validate code written in a language he doesn't even understand? What makes you think he's even going to be able to adequately test it? You do need to be able to write actual code to do that.
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Re: I beg to differ (Score:2)
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I've really only used it for writing test code. Since I don't like the idea
Re:I beg to differ (Score:4, Interesting)
The C-level execs think that AI will help them save on costs and have been holding off hiring more developers because AI is just around the corner.
I don't know where you're getting this idea from, but this is total nonsense, and it's not at all how executives think. Hiring is a tactical decision to meet current market demand, not a strategic one, unless it's part of creating a new business unit altogether where mass hiring is part of the plan. Making moves on what you expect to happen in the future is a strategic decision.
Think about it for a second. You've got customers demanding product X, but you don't currently have the staff that you need to produce it in the quantity demanded. Here's how the scenario is playing out in your head when the customer approaches the business leaders: "Well yeah, in order for us to take your business we'd need to hire more developers, but we're waiting for that AI thing right around the corner to come around so that we won't need to, call us back in a few months." Guess what? Those customers aren't calling back. Not only will they think you're a moron, but even if they didn't, either way they're going to find a different supplier who has an actual plan, which will almost certainly come with a contract to secure a lower rate over a longer term.
If you've ever wondered why you're not an executive...well...there you go. You're used to the idea of being able to just walk into an office somewhere and collect a paycheck. Businesses don't get to do that. If they want to survive they have to actively engage with their customers and respond to market changes. You think way more like a consumer.
A junior developer doesn't have the experience to know how to do this, because they haven't had to deal with junior developers. Senior developers who've had to work with junior developers and help them grow know how to work with AIs because it's almost the same thing.
I can't speak for every organization out there, but I've never seen software development work this way. This sounds like classic rsilvergun thinking. What you're describing as a junior developer sounds more like a college student, or maybe somebody on a different team who might do some scripting but isn't an actual software developer -- like maybe an accountant or an analyst trying to do something with python. By the time you get any software development job at all, it's assumed that you already know how to write software just as well as as, if not even better than, a senior developer might. You've already done entire projects from start to finish before, regardless of whether they were on the job or just a hobby project. When I got my first actual programming job, I even taught taught entire concepts to senior developers. And guess what? That's common. It happens all the time. The difference between junior and senior depends on the organization, but generally comes down to the following:
1) Your ability to self-start: You see customers talking about problem with X Y or Z with your program, you do the work to figure out what would fit their needs, create a ticket for it, and either implement yourself or have somebody else do it. Or you think "hey, adding feature X would bring in a lot of value", followed by the same. This will even include actively going out of your way to collect data to find the pain points so that you can come up with a meaningful solution.
2) Your ability to lead a team of developers. And by lead, that doesn't mean telling them to write functions for you that you later integrate into shit like you listed in your AI example. That's something they should already be able to do on their own. They're not students.
3) Soft skills. Can you actually talk to customers? Can you run meetings? Can you plan large projects that will take months if not years to complete?
Please let me know what you work on (Score:2)
So I can make sure to never use it. At best, you want to destroy the pipeline of junior programmers. At worst, you're so incompetent you don't realize you're just copying and pasting from stack exchange and probably don't understand whatever subtle bugs you've introduced into your codebase.
Re: Please let me know what you work on (Score:2)
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Right now you still have these experienced people but what happens when you no longer train new juniors?
Someone had better tell the E-suites quick (Score:4, Insightful)
Execs are going to need to re-staff back 500K software engineering jobs they've culled since 2022 ASAP.
Let's dissect this, "the impact AI will have on tech-sector employment is highly uncertain", fair enough, it's hard to predict the future. Next point, "Employment in the professional, scientific, and technical services sector is forecast to increase by 10.5% from 2023 to 2033", wait what? So we don't know what the impact on tech sector employment will be, but we'll forecast rainbows and sunshine for tech sector employment while other sectors will eat all the job losses. Makes complete sense, no hidden agenda here, the 500K layoffs of tech sector jobs are fake news, didn't really happen, hiring is going strong?
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Execs are going to need to re-staff back 500K software engineering jobs they've culled since 2022 ASAP.
I doubt it. At the height of COVID you saw a massive shift in consumer demand for digital services. Executives responded by hiring more staff. Some of them (I'm looking in Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and Google's direction) overdid it by assuming this was going to be a long-term thing rather than just a bubble, mainly because they've had their sights set on cloud growth for so long that they more or less just assumed that it would never really die down. Until it did. And when it did, rsilvergun and drinkypoo
What did they predict before AI came along? (Score:2)
Someone go back 5 years ago, to see what their predictions were about the growth of the tech job market, and see how it is now.
No one saw AI, in its current disruptive form, coming. That is why it is disruptive. And yet these predictions are based around the status quo of this disruption continuing in its current state.
What if generative AI is actually capable of managing these systems? Why would we not think they could not do so, if AI advances as we predict it might? WOuldn't this completely fuck up th
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Just yesterday Slashdot literally posted that [slashdot.org].
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That's a very big "what if".
Cars have been able to drive themselves now for a decade or more. Self-driving taxis have been available since 2017, when Waymo entered the Phoenix market. Are Uber drivers out of work? No, hardly.
Just because a technology exists, doesn't mean it can immediately displace an entire workforce.
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> Are Uber drivers out of work? No, hardly.
"Waymo’s share gains have mostly come at the expense of Uber. The early moving Uber controlled 63% of San Francisco’s ride share dollars at the end of 2023. However, as of January 2025, Uber controls less than 55%. Lyft also lost some share, falling to 31% from 35% in the same period."
https://www.earnestanalytics.c... [earnestanalytics.com]
Start from a current deflated figure... (Score:2)
Fire a bunch of people back in 2017, and yeah... forecasts from today may look rosy too.
But lets play the game. AI is just better tools. Meaning if we used to pay someone to do it before, we might use AI to do it instead. And why not sell what the AI created afterward? Why force AI to recreate the wheel every time?
Just Yesterday... (Score:2)
You posted back-to-back stories:
#1 [slashdot.org]
#2 [slashdot.org]
You need to make up your fucking mind which narrative editorials you're going to post, because this mix-and-match shit has got to stop.
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Clearly, there is no consensus on which direction AI is going to lead us. It's hardly a done deal that AI will suddenly wipe out the entire tech sector.
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> It's hardly a done deal that AI will suddenly wipe out the entire tech sector
That could happen, but it would mean that it would also wipe out all other sectors. Because if you have an AI that can replace any programmer, you have an AI that can write any software, meaning you can ask it to create a robot to replace a worker in any profession.
We already have artificial super intelligence that can beat 100% of humans in a narrow tasks, like predicting protein folding or playing go. What we are missing is
DOGE Was Here (Score:1)
Says all 3 people remaining at the USDOL.
Well ... (Score:2)
AI May Not Impact Tech-Sector Employment
Certainly not in the C-Suites anyway.
What? THIS Labor Dept? (Score:2)
Anyone who believes any stats issued by this Dept. of Labor is believing in fantasies. This administration will lie just like their leader. Remember he redirected a hurricane with Sharpie and now claims Ukraine started the war. And Elmo is claiming "waste, fraud, and abuse" that does not exist. They are also taking down sites reporting gov. data that they do not like.
In the Georgia town hall, Rep. Rich McCormick, who represents a deep red district, got an earfull from the voters. When asked why the administ