For a considerable period, prominent figures, ranging from Ford CEO Jim Farley to the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, have been issuing warnings that artificial intelligence poses a significant threat to entry-level employment.
TL;DR
- Job openings dropped 32% since ChatGPT's introduction, impacting Gen Z's entry-level roles.
- Healthcare, particularly home health aides, offers stable jobs for Gen Z without university degrees.
- Healthcare jobs are projected to grow significantly, with roles like nurse practitioners offering high salaries.
- AI is not expected to displace healthcare positions, making it a resilient career field.
New data indicates their predictions might be accurate: Since ChatGPT's emergence, job advertisements nationwide According to data from the Federal Reserve, there's been a decrease of approximately 32% as businesses increasingly adopt AI tools and automation to enhance productivity.
Younger employees seem to be facing the heaviest burden. A recent Stanford University report regarding AI's effect on jobs suggests that Gen Z, especially, has encountered a significant obstacle. While the economy's total employment keeps expanding, job advertisements for individuals aged 22-25 in their early careers have seen a 13% decrease since 2022 within sectors more heavily impacted by AI.
These professions, like software development and customer service representatives—once popular pathways for young workers—are in “substantial” decline, the report warned.
Despite the grim statistics, a positive trend emerges: healthcare, with home health aides standing out.
This occupation is among those least likely to be impacted by AI and is also seeing significant expansion, with projections indicating almost 740,000 new home health aide jobs will become available in the coming ten years, as reported by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. What’s more, the field is one of the only areas where employment for young workers has actually been growing faster than for older workers.
While it's true that the median yearly income of roughly $35,000 might not be the ideal pay for Many Gen Z employees. Despite this, the requirements to enter the field are minimal, needing just a high school diploma and brief on-the-job instruction, and the industry's steadiness provides a valuable asset in today's unpredictable job landscape. Though not particularly glamorous, this offers a secure position within one of the few sectors largely unaffected by automation.
Healthcare sector sees a surge in demand, with almost 2 million positions available.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical role of frontline caregivers, revealing persistent shortages and exhaustion within hospitals and nursing homes. As baby boomers retire grows, the need for healthcare professionals is projected to increase significantly. Over the coming ten years, the United States is expected to see about 1.9 million healthcare job openings each year, according to BLS data.
Many healthcare positions offer considerable salaries, a contrast to home health aide roles.
Consider nurse practitioners as an illustration. The median yearly salary is approximately $130,000, and the sector is anticipated to expand by 40%, with 128,400 positions foreseen in the coming ten years, positioning it as the third-quickest growing occupation nationwide. Although this career demands significant schooling, it provides lasting financial security, a quality that's growing scarce in the current, fast-evolving employment landscape.
Beyond physicians, roles such as physician assistants, nurse anesthetists, and health services managers also provide comparable advantages: substantial compensation, stable employment, and opportunities for career advancement.
For the time being, artificial intelligence isn't anticipated to displace healthcare positions.
With AI increasingly transforming the professional landscape and jeopardizing numerous office positions, the healthcare industry emerges as a particularly secure field.
Geoffrey Hinton, a computer science trailblazer frequently referred to as the “Godfather of AI,”, has forecasted that a mere “very skilled” of the workforce will retain employment in the coming times. Despite everything, he still thinks healthcare professionals will show resilience.
“They’re much more elastic,” Hinton explained earlier this year on The Diary of a CEO.
“If you could make doctors five times as efficient, we could all have five times as much healthcare for the same price,” he added. “There’s almost no limit to how much health care people can absorb—[patients] always want more healthcare if there’s no cost to it.”
Similarly, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis—who envisions AI curing diseases and even helping colonize the Milky Way in the near future—says the human element of care is irreplaceable.
“There’s a lot of things that we won’t want to do with a machine,” he said. “You wouldn’t want a robot nurse—there’s something about the human empathy aspect of that care that’s particularly humanistic.”
Gen Z individuals not currently in their ideal career, share your experiences with us at [email protected].