Our latest report, in partnership with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) on how GenAI will impact industries, companies, and jobs, and reshape the economy.
By Gad Levanon, with special thanks to Frank Steemers, Mariano Mamertino, Matt Sigelman, Erik Leiden, Shrinidhi Rao, and Debbie Wasden for their support on this project.
This work was recently covered by Steve Lohr in the New York Times.
GenAI will touch a broad array of roles. In manycases, however, the impact will be less aboutautomating away tasks than about augmentingworkers’ productivity and effectiveness ortransforming the definition of job rolesaltogether to capitalize on new technologiesand new unit economics.
Workforce reductions could become widespreadover the coming decade. But they may be drivenless by machines simply replacing humansthan by economic growth lagging behind bigleaps in worker productivity. Early adopters ofGenAI will see increased productivity as rolesare automated, augmented or transformed.However, the surge in output is unlikely tomeet a corresponding growth in demand forgoods and services, leading to overstaffing inmany industries. Business leaders must preparemitigation strategies (such as hiring freezes) tominimize the disruption.
While those disruptions will carry a high humancost, they are likely to be only temporary.Corporate profits will increase as firms benefitfrom decreased payroll costs. In a competitivemarket, we expect price decreases to follow.Finally, price cuts and new jobs created byGenAI will drive increased demand, andemployment will rebound, at least somewhat.
