New research from McKinsey projects that the U.S. labor market is entering its most disruptive stretch in decades, with roughly 11 million workers expected to move out of shrinking occupations into entirely different fields by 2035. McKinsey senior partners Eric Kutcher and Tanguy Catlin, who led the analysis, found that the overall number of jobs in the economy will keep growing, but the mix of roles is set to change faster than at almost any point on record.
The firm estimates that about 770,000 workers a year will need to cross occupational lines over the next decade, a pace roughly 3.6 times faster than the historical average. Unlike the sharp but short lived disruption triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, which reshuffled jobs over a year or two, researchers expect this transition to stretch across a full decade, giving employers and workers less of a single shock to react to and more of a sustained structural shift to manage.
Administrative support work is projected to absorb the deepest losses, with automation capable of handling an estimated 80% of the hours currently performed in those roles. McKinsey's modeling suggests an administrative assistant could reasonably move into a project manager role, since the two jobs share about 58% of their required skills, though the switch still demands new training in scheduling, process improvement, forecasting and quality management. Other paths look far steeper: a dishwasher moving into a home health aide position would share only about 20% of the needed skills, on top of certification requirements and comparatively modest wage gains. A packager shifting into production fabrication fares better, sharing roughly 52% of required skills and typically earning a meaningful pay increase, with no licensing hurdle standing in the way.
