The U.S. labor market is preparing for a decade of slower overall growth, but a handful of industries and occupations will expand at a breakneck pace, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. From 2025 to 2035, total employment will increase by 5.9 million jobs to 176.2 million, representing growth of just 3.5%, a fraction of the 10.9% pace over the previous decade, BLS said in a report late last month. As the AI boom continues to ripple through the economy, the utility industry is expected to hire at the fastest pace, increasing employment by 9.8%. This comes as hyperscalers rush to build data centers that require immense amounts of electricity. “Nearly all of the job growth is expected from electric power generation, transmission and distribution due to growing demand for electricity, including artificial intelligence energy demands,” the BLS said. Within that category, certain subsectors will see even larger employment gains: solar electric power generation will increase by 153% and wind electric power generation will increase by 62%. While additional hiring by utilities should translate into 58,800 jobs, that number will be dwarfed by the health and social care industry, which will expand employment by 2.2 million over the next decade. It will be the second-fastest hiring sector with a growth rate of 9.5% and will account for 37% of all new jobs created through 2035. “Strong job growth is expected to stem from both an aging population and the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes,” the BLS said. Among individual occupations, nurse practitioners will see a 41% increase in employment, while medical and health services managers will increase 24%. And despite fears that AI will wipe out software and programming jobs, tech talent will also be in high demand. In fact, the professional, scientific and technical services industry is projected to be the third fastest growing sector, at 8.6%, and adding the second largest number of jobs, 926,700. As companies rely on artificial intelligence tools to drive operations and decision-making, the number of data scientists is expected to grow by 34.6%, and computer and information research scientists will increase by 21.8%. Those forecasts add hope to office workers after top AI leaders previously signaled that a job apocalypse was imminent. But even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have walked back some of their previous prophecies, albeit before the successful IPOs. AI will undoubtedly continue to weigh on employment elsewhere. The office and administrative support sector will see a drop of 4%, or 752,100 jobs, the most of any major occupational group. The sales and related occupations sector will fall 1.4% as e-commerce continues to expand and artificial intelligence tools become more incorporated into business processes. “While increasing adoption of AI is expected to support demand for some occupations, the associated productivity gains may dampen employment demand for others,” the BLS said. “The use of generative AI software, which can be leveraged to automate repetitive tasks and speed up certain processes, may limit demand for some jobs in the arts, design, entertainment, sports and media occupational group.”
