Which Jobs Will Be Automated in the Next 10 Years?

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are projected to reshape the workforce over the next decade. By 2034, there will be 761,900 fewer office and administrative support jobs than there were in 2024, and there will be 313,600 fewer cashier positions in that same time. Over 177,000 general office clerk jobs are expected to become obsolete. About 90,000 fewer fast-food cooks will be employed in 2034 than in 2024. That’s according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) most recent employment projections.

The government agency reasons that automation or other efficiency gains through technology, particularly AI will lead to a decrease in demand for a variety of occupations, most notably arts and design, sales, and administrative support.

Read on to find out which occupations are most at risk of job loss due to automation and other structural changes in the economy.

These are the jobs that will experience the largest decline in employment over the next decade

Four major occupational groups are projected to see declines in employment, per the BLS:

• Office and administrative support occupations, with 761,900 fewer jobs.
• Sales and related occupations, with 297,800 fewer jobs.
• Production occupations, with 99,600 fewer jobs.
• Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations, with 25,200 fewer jobs.

Office and administrative support occupations are estimated to experience the largest decline in employment, with over 750,000 jobs becoming obsolete by 2034.

According to the BLS, these are the 10 occupations that will undergo the largest decline in employment – caused at least in part by automation or technology – by 2034. All of these occupations make less than the national median on average.

1. Cashiers (-313,600 positions)
2. Office clerks, general (-177,800 positions)
3. Customer service representatives (-153,700 positions)
4. Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks (-94,300 positions)
5. Cooks, fast food (-90,300 positions)
6. First-line supervisors of retail sales workers (-72,300 positions)
7. Shipping, receiving, and inventory clerks (-66,300 positions)
8. Tellers (-44,900 positions)
9. Data entry keyers (-36,700 positions)
10. Packers and packagers, hand (-32,200 positions)

Two-thirds (20 out of 30) of the occupations BLS estimated would have the largest employment decline by 2034 are in office and administrative support, sales, and production.

See the tables below for more details, including more occupations, occupational categories, median wages, and other data.

These are the occupations that will see the fastest declines over the next decade – again, where automation and technology are seemingly one of the causes. Occupations in bold make less than the national median wage.

1. Word processors and typists (-36.1% employment)
2. Roof bolters, mining (-34.2% employment)
3. Telephone operators (-27.5% employment)
4. Switchboard operators, including answering service (-26.3% employment)
5. Data entry keyers (-25.9% employment)
6. Foundry mold and coremakers (-25.9% employment)
7. Patternmakers, metal and plastic (-24.4% employment)
8. Loading and moving machine operators, underground mining (-22.3% employment)
9. Telemarketers (-22.1% employment)
10. Grinding and polishing workers, hand (-21.2% employment)

Automation and technology will contribute to lower employment in jobs held by workers with less education who perform repetitive tasks

Given that occupations that feature repetitive and predictable tasks are most easily automated, it’s logical that occupations in office and administrative support are estimated to see the largest net decline in employment and some of the fastest declines in employment over the next decade.

Meanwhile, cashiers are projected to have the largest decline in employment by 2034 of any category. BLS estimates that 313,600 cashier jobs will no longer be necessary by 2034 due to a combination of technology and automation, including self-checkout and online commerce.

Workers in jobs most at risk of automation are more likely to make less money and have less education than workers in jobs not at risk of automation

While automation presents risks to workers across the economy, those who have less education and who perform more repetitive tasks tend to experience greater disruptions due to automation, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The agency acknowledges in its recent study that “available data do not explicitly identify workers at risk of losing their jobs to automation.” But it notes that the data from the study and other research can be used to identify the skills needed for jobs that will be in greater demand over the next decade, which tend to require higher levels of education.

BLS data indicates that 23 of the 30 jobs at risk of the largest decline by 2034 pay less than the median wage. It’s a similar story for the 30 fastest-declining jobs: 19 out of 30 pay less than the median.

Unfortunately, low-wage workers with relatively little formal education are the least likely to be able to afford retraining or upskilling they may need to change careers. Employers may be less willing to upskill lower-wage, lower-skilled workers because doing so would require more resources than upskilling higher-wage, higher-skilled workers.

It’s not just low-wage workers: 72,300 supervisor roles are expected to be obsolete by 2034

Low-wage jobs are not the only ones at risk of automation. The Brookings Institution examined the overlap between patents for AI technologies and job descriptions and found that certain roles most commonly occupied by men with bachelor’s degrees are most exposed to automation, along with production jobs. The latter category includes managers, supervisors, and analysts, according to Brookings.

BLS projections suggest these roles are at risk of automation. BLS projects 72,300 fewer first-line supervisors of retail sales workers by 2034, for example. As automation and other technologies require fewer workers in roles that supervisors would manage, a decline in the number of supervisors would logically follow. AI may also be able to complete some tasks that supervisors have traditionally done.

The Brookings Institution also found that women are less exposed to automation because they have tended to work in occupations that require more interpersonal skills, such as education and healthcare.

A separate Brookings report found that women have historically adapted better to automation than men, despite previously being more exposed to automation. Women are also trending toward surpassing men in educational attainment and, as a result, may be better positioned to cope with and benefit from automation.

Robots and AI aren’t all doom and gloom

Automation is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, automation can render certain jobs obsolete and create hardship for economically vulnerable individuals. On the other hand, automation may also lead to productivity gains, lower prices, and new products.

It’s unlikely that automation will erase entire occupations. Workers in any occupation carry out a range of tasks, not all of which can be automated. And there’s certainly a debate about which jobs are most threatened by automation and how quickly the technology that enables it will be developed and adopted.

Still, certain tasks can be more easily automated, such as repetitive ones that don’t rely heavily on human-to-human interaction, or those that involve activities that large language models (LLMs) are becoming particularly adept at. Those tasks account for a larger share of work in certain occupations. As a result, some occupations are more at risk of automation than others.

Notably, over half of those 30 occupations provide below-average wages. In other words, hundreds of thousands of economically vulnerable workers are projected to lose their jobs to automation, and at the same time, they are less likely to have the financial means to independently retrain or upskill to switch careers. This is a vexing problem, the solutions to which are hotly debated.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Despite the rapid pace of technological change, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that total U.S. employment will grow 3.1% to 175.2 million jobs from 2024 to 2034.

And if those in lower-wage occupations that are most exposed to automation are given support to learn new skills and retrain, automation – and a smart response to it – can be a force that elevates the livelihoods and competitiveness of otherwise at-risk workers.

Full employment decline tables

Largest employment declines predicted by 2034

Fastest employment declines predicted by 2034

Outside experts weigh in

Jason D. Schloetzer

Associate Professor of Business Administration, Georgetown University

Mark Muro

Senior Fellow and Policy Director, Brookings Institution

Daniel Zhao

Senior Economist, Glassdoor

Sources

• The Brookings Institution (2019.) “Gender, occupational segregation, and automation.”
• The Brookings Institution (2019.) “What jobs are affected by AI? Better-paid, better-educated workers face the most exposure.”
• Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025.) “Fastest declining occupations.”
• Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025.) “Occupations with the largest job declines.”
• Government Accountability Office (2022.) “Insights into Skills and Training Programs for Impacted Workers.”
• McKinsey (2021.) “The future of work after COVID-19.”
• MIT Sloan School of Management (2020.) “A new study measures the actual impact of robots on jobs. It’s significant.”
• Seth Harris (2019.) “Testimony of Seth D. Harris Former Acting U.S. Secretary and Deputy U.S. Secretary of Labor House Education and Labor Committee Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Investment Hearing – ‘The Future of Work: Ensuring Workers are Competitive in a Rapidly Changing Economy’.”
• World Economic Forum (2021.) “Robots and your job: how automation is changing the workplace.”

About the Author

Margo Winton Parodi is a Motley Fool copy editor with a professional editing certification from UC Berkeley Extension. She previously worked at a book publisher and a San Francisco tech company, and has edited projects across personal finance, young-adult fiction, cookbooks, and graphic novels. Margo holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of California San Diego. Fun fact: Margo has worked on all three of Snoop Dogg’s cookbooks.

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