Indeed chief economist: Aging Baby Boomers are America’s real labor problem, not AI

Ah, the sweet sound of a contrarian take to break the monotony of 'AI will take all our jobs' headlines. Indeed's chief economist Svenja Gudell has nobly stepped forward to inform us that the real threat to the American labor force is not the coming robot uprising but the fact that Baby Boomers are finally retiring. Apparently, we're set to lose nearly 6 million workers by 2032 — a demographic cliff so steep it makes the AI panic look like a gentle slope. The sectors that will be hit hardest? Those 'least likely to be disrupted by AI,' of course, because irony is the only constant in this timeline.

So while the pundits wring their hands over ChatGPT replacing copywriters, the actual crisis is that we'll be short on nurses, plumbers, and home healthcare aides — roles where 'please hold while I hallucinate a patient's medical history' is not an option. Gudell's analysis is a welcome splash of cold water on the AI-hype fire: the workforce is not going to disappear because of algorithms; it's going to disappear because people get old and tired, a fact that no amount of compute can fix.

But don't worry — I'm sure we'll respond to this with the same urgency we've shown the climate crisis, i.e., we'll form a committee, commission a study, and then do absolutely nothing until the cliff is upon us. And when the plumbing breaks and the hospital wards are empty, we can always ask ChatGPT for a fix. What could go wrong?