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UK projects 3.9 million AI jobs by 2035

1 min read

20:44UTC

The government's own figures show 90% of net new jobs will be professional-tier. The workers being displaced will not fill them.

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Key takeaway

Ninety per cent of projected UK AI jobs require professional-tier qualifications.

In January, the UK Government published projections showing AI-direct employment rising from 158,000 jobs in 2024 to 3.9 million by 2035, with up to 9.7 million in AI-related occupations.⁠¹ Ninety per cent of net employment growth falls in professional and associate professional roles. Declines concentrate in administrative, secretarial, and skilled trades.

AI roles are growing, but the workers being displaced from clerical and administrative positions are not the ones who will fill them. The government's own data amounts to an admission that displacement will fall disproportionately on mid- and lower-tier workers, while new opportunities cluster among those who least need them.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The UK Government projects that jobs specifically related to AI will grow from 158,000 today to 3.9 million by 2035. That sounds like good news. The catch is that nine in ten of those new jobs will require professional or higher-level qualifications. The workers being displaced from clerical and administrative roles by AI are not typically those who will be hired for professional AI roles. The government's own figures confirm that the gains and losses will fall on different people.

What could happen next?

Meaning
Official UK projections confirm that AI job creation and AI job displacement affect different segments of the workforce, making aggregate employment growth statistics misleading as a welfare measure.

Sources:UK Government

Mentions:UK Government →

First Reported In

Update #3 · The AI jobs data contradicts itself

UK Government· 28 Mar 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

UK projects 3.9 million AI jobs by 2035

Official UK projections confirm that AI job creation concentrates at the top, leaving displaced workers without a path.

Led to

UK AI job losses double the norm

UK government projection that AI jobs cluster in professional roles explains why 8% net job loss falls disproportionately on non-professional workers.

Occurred 30 Mar 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Salesforce, Synopsys and TD Bank Group

Salesforce, Synopsys and TD Bank Group each filed quarterly disclosures in late August booking restructuring charges, or none at all, without naming AI as a cause. Their silence matters because Challenger's tracker shows AI as a stated reason fell to fourth place in August even as the year-to-date AI-cut total still leads at 116,175.

Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia

Singapore launched its Skills and Workforce Development Agency on 16 September, giving citizens six months of free premium AI tools, while South Korea ring-fenced its AI tax windfall in a new Future Response Fund. Taiwan kept funding its AI build past NT$190bn and Indonesia rewired vocational training around AI literacy, betting state-built skills beat a market-led adjustment.

ver.di, CGT Fonction Publique and CCOO

Germany's ver.di banked a 3.3% pay rise on 1 September and opened talks on a Tarifvertrag Transformation covering dismissal bans and reskilling, while France's CGT rejected Paris's AI negotiating timetable the same week. Spain's CCOO went further on 21 September, proposing to tax companies by the jobs they generate rather than wait for the next bargaining round.

BIS General Manager and Federal Reserve governors

The BIS's General Manager said on 10 September that AI displacement remains limited, even as the BIS's own survey found nearly 80% of firms plan to automate roles. Two Federal Reserve governors made the same point in July, arguing the labour-market data does not yet show a mass-firing event.

Bank of Canada, ONS and ECB

The Bank of Canada found the job-finding gap between AI-exposed and unexposed occupations widened from 2.2 to 13.9 percentage points since 2015-19, while separations barely moved. That framing, a hiring freeze rather than a firing wave, is echoed by the ECB's finding that euro-area AI use hit 52% of workers in 2026, concentrated among the university-educated.

Office for National Statistics

Deferred its Transformed Labour Force Survey beyond November 2027 and disclosed a May 2026 telephone-collection failure. The ONS carries no AI-attribution layer at all, so Britain sits outside this month's cohort of measuring states by its own admission.