Pessimism Reigns Over AI and Jobs, Pew Poll Finds

What do people across the globe think AI will do to the labor market? A global Pew Research Center poll released on Thursday found that in 34 out of 37 countries, the most common answer was “fewer jobs.” Across a 37-country median, 46% of respondents predicted fewer jobs, 13% said it wouldn’t make much difference, and just 9% anticipated more jobs. Roughly a quarter said they weren’t sure. The only country where more people thought AI would create more jobs than it eliminates was Nigeria (27% vs 26%), though “not sure” beat out “fewer jobs” by considerable margins in Thailand (49% vs 32%) and the Philippines (54% vs 26%). Pew identified a clear trend towards pessimism in countries with higher GDP, perhaps reflecting fears about the automation of white-collar work and/or an AI-induced collapse in wages. In the U.S., 71% of respondents predicted fewer jobs, up from 64% just two years ago. Young adults also appeared to report the most anxiety about AI’s impact on the job market in both high- and middle-income countries, Pew reported, although this trend was not universal. Pew noted that high earners and the educated were more likely to predict job loss (at least in middle-income countries), though that’s because lower earners and the less formally educated were more likely to answer “not sure,” as opposed to having a more positive outlook. “The share of adults who say they are more concerned than excited about the technology has gone up since last year in Sweden (+9 percentage points), Poland (+8), the Netherlands (+7), Hungary (+6) and Australia (+4),” Pew noted. Respondents who described their overall ideological leanings as closer to the left than right tended to be more pessimistic than their conservative counterparts on inequality. Pew found one of the widest ideological gaps of any of the 34 nations included in this part of the poll in the U.S., where liberals were 31% more likely to fear rising inequality than right-wingers. AI’s actual impact on the job market so far is unclear, although that may just be because it’s too early to tell. Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research experts found the overall consequences for the U.S. labor market had been marginal in work published July 2026, although AI may already be contributing to a harsher environment for recent graduates. Of course, Silicon Valley firms driving the frontier edge of AI haven’t done themselves any favors on the popularity front by relentlessly scaremongering as a marketing tactic and promising customers huge savings via mass layoffs. A number of CEOs have changed their tune and now insist they’re only selling productivity tools that won’t replace workers, but Pew’s numbers seem to indicate the AI hype rhetoric has won the industry very few friends among the public writ large. While respondents appeared slightly less negative about AI’s impact on inequality, that’s basically because many respondents expected more of the same bullshit. “On balance, people are more likely to say AI will increase rather than decrease the gap between the rich and the poor,” Pew added. “Still, relatively large shares in many places are either unsure or say AI will not affect inequality in their country much.” Still, about 46% of U.S. respondents said it would worsen inequality, while just 21% said it would make little difference. Just five percent of Americans said they believed it would make the country more equitable.