Is AI Taking White-Collar Jobs? What the Latest Numbers Tell Us

Consulting firms, law offices and accounting businesses might seem like obvious places for artificial intelligence to shrink payrolls. In October, all three industries added jobs.

Their gains contributed to Friday’s brighter-than-expected monthly jobs report from the Labor Department. All told, professional and business services added 70,000 jobs, its largest monthly increase since July 2022.

The gains complicate fears that AI is set to become a white-collar job killer—concerns that helped sweep AI skeptics into office in this week’s elections.

Management, scientific and technical consulting services added 17,300 jobs in October over the previous month, while legal services added 2,400 and accounting and related services added 2,300. All are industries frequently ranked as among the most exposed to AI.

“I don’t know how you could look at this report and conclude that we’re entering anything like a white-collar job apocalypse,” said Harvard economist David Deming.

Preston Mui, a senior economist at Employ America, a nonprofit macroeconomic research group, said the report showed little sign so far of the sweeping losses among higher-end white-collar jobs.

“It’s not the bloodbath among knowledge workers that a lot of people had feared,” Mui said. “At least not yet.”

However, those gains run counter to many workers’ feelings about the job market—with many companies reluctant to either hire or lay off, many people are having a hard time breaking into the job market or moving up to a better job.

What’s more, not all white-collar industries are holding up as well. Newly released September jobs data shows document-preparation services cut employment 17% over the year; telephone call centers and public-relations agencies each lost 4.7%; and advertising agencies shed 3.9%.

Many economists think AI is a particular threat to entry-level, repetitive work—call-center workers, data-entry keyers, junior copywriters—which can be easily automated. At the same time, higher-skill white-collar jobs could benefit from AI if the technology makes them more productive. Lawyers, for example, could spend less time preparing documents and more time advising clients, potentially supporting demand for their services.

“It’s changing what employers are looking for,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at jobs site Indeed. “They’re leaning in to experienced workers and AI skills. What we’re seeing are employers adding additional requirements.”

While anecdotal reports of AI supplanting jobs abound, economists have struggled to find concrete evidence that it is causing widespread job losses. One complication: Many tech companies overhired coming out of the pandemic, and then began reducing their workforces right around when ChatGPT was first released in November 2022. That means that many layoffs that get attributed to AI could actually just be the result of management miscalculations.

Industry totals can also obscure changes in particular jobs, Mui noted. The figures group workers by their employer’s industry, rather than their occupation. A company could, for example, cut administrative positions while hiring for other roles.

“It turns out AI is broad but not that deep. Until it can do the entirety of someone’s job, it’s hard to plug it in to totally replace a worker,” Deming said. “A lot of the jobs we have are about people stuff—forming relationships and building trust. AI can’t do that for you.”

The AI build-out offers another source of demand for workers: the job of building data centers. Employers added a combined 10,800 jobs in nonresidential builders and specialty trade contractors—workers such as electricians who are in high demand at data-center sites. (Home-building, meanwhile, has been in a slump. Counterparts in residential building shed 16,400 jobs.)

Monthly spending on data-center construction increased by nearly 80% since the start of the year, according to the Commerce Department, while other nonresidential construction slid 4% over the same time.

A July study by Indeed found that job postings mentioning data centers more than doubled between June 2024 and June 2026, while overall postings fell about 12%. Roughly a quarter of data-center postings were for installation and maintenance workers.

The largest data-center building sites employ thousands of construction workers for years, though the facilities employ far fewer people once they are up and operating. Voters on Tuesday backed Democratic candidates who have been critical of data-center construction and pledged to slow it down or pause it.

Write to Ian Hodgson at ian.hodgson@wsj.com