Monday Mining: The 80% Jobs Prediction, Ten Years Later

“Some estimates suggest that 80% of today’s jobs might not exist in the same form in just 10 years. What are YOU doing to reinvent yourself for that potential reality?” – Futurist Jim Carroll, from the vault: November 11, 2016.

This is a new series I am running each Monday going forward – where I examine some prediction I made in the past, and see how things turned out.

I speak and write a lot about the future of jobs and careers, and this observation from 2016 seems to bear a lot of relevance in the context of what is happening with AI today in 2026. So how does the observation play out 10 years later?

The honest scorecard: jobs didn’t vanish at anywhere near 80% like I suggested. What happened instead is closer to what the qualifier in my own quote said — ‘not in the same form.’ In 2026, more than 42% of business tasks are now performed by machines, and automation has displaced roughly 5 million jobs since 2025 by some counts. But the consensus among labour economists is now explicit: automation transforms roles far more than it eliminates them, shifting task composition toward judgment, creativity, and interpersonal skills.

The scarier-sounding number got the headline in 2016. The more accurate word — ‘transform’ — was sitting right there in my own sentence the whole time.

And this is particularly relevant now in the era of AI – after all, you won’t be replaced by AI. But you will be replaced by someone who is better at using AI! This from a slide I often use on stage!

Then vs. now: Right instinct, wrong verb.

‘Not in the same form’ turned out to be the more accurate prediction than ‘80% won’t exist.’

That’s why it might be helpful to put this Daily inspiration post from years ago into your mind:

If you examine your situation carefully, there is always an opportunity for you to be a new you!

That’s exactly what you should be thinking about now!