The US labor market is going through a rapid evolution in the way people work and the work people do. Months after MGI released its last report on the future of work in America, the world found itself battling a global pandemic. Since then, the US job market has come roaring back from its sudden drop. The nature of work has changed as many workers have stuck with remote or hybrid models and employers have sped up their adoption of automation technologies. More recently, the accelerated development of generative AI, with its advanced natural language capabilities, has extended the possibilities for automation to a much wider set of occupations.
Amid this disruption, workers changed jobs at a remarkable pace—and a subset made bigger leaps and moved into entirely different occupations (Exhibit 1). Some 8.6 million occupational shifts took place from 2019 through 2022. Now even more change is in store. We expect an additional 12 million occupational shifts by 2030. The total number of transitions through 2030 could be 25 percent higher than we projected a little over two years ago.
