Job Market
A McKinsey Global Institute report published September 29 estimates that roughly 11 million U.S. workers, about 7% of current employees, may need to move out of occupations with declining demand and into wholly different occupations by 2035. The report, “Workforce in motion: Skills and pathways to future jobs in the United States,” frames the next decade as a problem of mobility rather than a shortage of work. In McKinsey’s words, “The next decade’s challenge is mobility, not scarcity.”
What the model estimates
McKinsey says the U.S. economy “could create more jobs in the next decade than will be replaced through automation.” Its model has automation reducing labor demand by the equivalent of roughly 36 million jobs, while growth could generate demand for more than 40 million. For about 25 million affected workers, growth in their current occupation could offset the effect of automation. The remaining 11 million may need to change occupations entirely.
The 11 million figure is McKinsey’s base estimate. Faster automation adoption or a larger drop in labor demand could push it above 16 million, the report says, while slower adoption or a smaller effect on demand could cut it to about 6 million. McKinsey says the base case depends on those two uncertain factors: how quickly organizations adopt automation and how much that reduces labor demand.
Meeting that need would require about 770,000 workers a year to switch occupational groups, according to the report. That is about 3.6 times the non-COVID historical average of roughly 215,000 transitions a year. McKinsey notes that about 788,000 workers a year made such moves from 2019 to 2022, but over a two- to three-year shock rather than a decade.
Where the pressure is concentrated
More than 75% of the workers who may need to transition are in three of 22 occupational groups: office and administrative support, retail and sales, and transportation and logistics. Only about one in seven, McKinsey estimates, can make the move with no or very limited retraining. Credentials are a recurring barrier: the report says roughly 85% of growing jobs require credentials or certifications. It also projects that about 60% of growing employment could fall in the top two wage quintiles, while more than 70% of declining employment could be in the bottom two.
What the estimate is not
These are model outputs for 2035, not observed layoffs and not a government projection. The report’s exhibits cite McKinsey’s own employment-forecast, automation and transition-pathway models, built on sources including Bureau of Labor Statistics and Lightcast data. Automation can reduce demand for tasks without eliminating an occupation, and the estimate does not say which individual employers will cut or add jobs, or what will happen in any one metro area.
What to watch
The better test will come from observed data: occupational employment, hiring, wages and training completions over the next several years. For workers and employers, the practical question the report raises is which declining occupations have realistic paths into growing roles at comparable pay, and how quickly credentials can be earned and recognized.
Sources
- McKinsey Global Institute (María Jesús Ramírez, Kweilin Ellingrud, Tanguy Catlin, Diego Castresana, Anna Kortis), “Workforce in motion: Skills and pathways to future jobs in the United States,” September 29, 2026. https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/Workforce-in-motion-Skills-and-pathways-to-future-jobs-in-the-United-States
Featured photo: A student trainee shows a visitor his welding booth at the Thomas Nelson Community College Workforce Training Center in Hampton, Va., in 2022. Representative image of occupational training; it is not connected to the McKinsey research. Photo: U.S. Department of Labor, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). Cropped from the original.
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