Your Job May Already Be in Jeopardy

By Michael Steinberger

Mr. Steinberger is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

Thomas Greifenberger graduated from the University of Delaware last spring. Although he double-majored in finance and marketing and minored in economics, it took him just three years to earn his bachelor’s degree. He had hoped that his solid grades and demonstrated drive would help him land a position in the financial services industry. But when Mr. Greifenberger began his job search, it quickly became apparent to him that he was sending résumés into a void. He got a few nibbles — several companies invited him to do asynchronous video interviews.

Nothing more came of those opportunities, however, and after a point, he concluded that he was on a futile quest. “It was super discouraging,” he said.

He has returned home to Long Island, where he is now employed by his family’s tree service business. Mr. Greifenberger enjoys the work — he is often the guy up in the bucket, pruning branches — and the tangible results it yields. But he admits that it’s not the future he had envisioned for himself. “I still go on LinkedIn from time to time, but I think that ship has sailed for me,” he said.

Just a few years ago, an entry-level role with a bank or an asset management firm might have been Mr. Greifenberger’s for the asking. But the white-collar job market has cooled dramatically. While the unemployment rate remains relatively low, 4.3 percent, office jobs are suddenly a lot harder to come by, for recent college graduates and experienced professionals alike.

Many companies went on hiring sprees coming out of the pandemic, and the slowdown is perhaps just the inevitable adjustment. But it is happening against the backdrop of the generative A.I. revolution and fears that vast numbers of knowledge workers will soon be evicted from their cubicles and replaced by machines — fears being amplified by an army of online Cassandras. In a sequence of events that called to mind the 1938 Orson Welles radio adaptation of “The War of the Worlds,” famous for convincing panicked listeners that aliens had really invaded, a recent Substack post imagining the economic hellscape that could result from an A.I.-induced white-collar blood bath helped send the Dow Jones industrial average tumbling 800 points. Anxious times.

It is certainly possible that we are in another moment of mass hysteria, even mass hallucination, and that A.I. will not cause permanent widespread joblessness — either because its capabilities will prove to be more limited than observers first thought or because our highly adaptable species will respond to technological change as it always has, by finding new sources of gainful employment. That the people selling the artificial intelligence are among those sounding the most ominous warnings about its potential fallout is notable, however. Some of them are prone to bombastic claims, but it is hard to see how spooking the public serves their interests. It might be wise to take their predictions at face value and assume that A.I. is indeed going to devour a lot of white-collar jobs.

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