Key Highlights

  • Roughly 10 million American jobs could be displaced by artificial intelligence over the next decade, with entry-level white-collar and routine office roles among the most exposed.
  • Nearly one in five workers expects AI to eliminate their job within five years, even though widespread job losses have not yet materialized broadly.
  • The federal government has proposed consolidating eleven separate workforce development programs into a single new grant program while eliminating Job Corps, a longstanding career training program for young adults.
  • A federal executive order has set a goal of surpassing one million active apprenticeships, requiring that a minimum share of new workforce grant funding be spent specifically on apprenticeship programs.

Scale of Potential AI Job Displacement Remains Uncertain

Roughly 10 million American jobs could be displaced by artificial intelligence over the next decade, with entry-level white-collar positions and routine office work particularly exposed. Nearly one in five workers currently expects AI to eliminate their job within five years, even though widespread job losses have yet to materialize broadly. Earlier waves of technological change, including the shift to computers, displaced workers but also created new categories of employment over time. Whether AI will create comparable numbers of new jobs, or how quickly, remains unclear, and the disruption is expected to differ from past technological shocks by affecting white-collar roles spread across the country rather than concentrated manufacturing hubs.

Existing Retraining Programs Are Small and Face Further Cuts

America's primary historical response to trade-related job losses, a federal program that funded retraining and extended unemployment benefits, closed to new applicants in 2022. In 2023, the main federal training scheme for displaced workers spent just $170 million on about 39,000 people, offering modest vouchers toward approved courses. The federal government has since proposed consolidating eleven separate workforce development programs into a single new grant program, while eliminating Job Corps, a decades-old career training program for low-income young adults, citing concerns about program cost-effectiveness. The proposed restructuring would give states greater flexibility to design their own workforce programs, though critics have said generic funding structures may not adequately replace specialized programs currently serving vulnerable populations.

Community colleges provide most short-term training but receive roughly $25 billion in public funding to serve about 8 million people annually, a fraction of the funding directed toward four-year universities. Roughly four in ten American high school graduates enroll in four-year programs, leaving fewer structured pathways for workers who need to retrain outside that system.

Apprenticeships Named a Policy Priority Amid Broader Cuts

A federal executive order has directed relevant government departments to develop a plan to expand the number of active apprentices toward one million, with particular emphasis on the technology sector, and has instructed that new workforce grant funding require a minimum share, generally around 10%, be spent specifically on apprenticeship programs. Despite this stated priority, overall workforce development funding has been proposed for reduction by roughly a third from previous levels, leading some workforce advocates to argue that the modest apprenticeship set-aside does not offset broader funding cuts elsewhere in the system. Apprenticeships combining paid work with structured training have grown more popular in recent years, with federal officials reporting the addition of hundreds of thousands of new apprentices, though the total number of registered apprentices remains well below comparable programs in other advanced economies relative to population size.

Sectoral Programs Show Promise Despite Limited Scale

Sectoral training programs, which bring employers and training providers together to design courses around specific job openings, have shown earnings gains of 11% to 40% in randomized trials across health care, IT support and manufacturing. Several newer initiatives backed by private-sector donors, including technology companies, have launched pilot programs in a handful of states, building on existing state workforce schemes that combine coaching, structured training and pathways into long-term employment. A sitting Connecticut governor said he would welcome greater collaboration with AI companies to help states adapt their workforce strategies, while a state commerce official in North Carolina has noted that many displaced white-collar workers are unlikely to accept retraining into unrelated manual trades, underscoring the need for new roles that build on workers' existing skills and professional identities rather than requiring a complete career change.

Federal apprenticeship funding for the current fiscal year stands at roughly $285 million, a relatively small figure compared with the scale of investment some workforce experts argue would be needed to meaningfully expand apprenticeship access nationwide. Whether the combination of a stated apprenticeship priority and broader funding consolidation ultimately expands or contracts the country's overall capacity to retrain displaced workers likely will not become fully clear until the new grant structure has been in place for at least a full budget cycle.