Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Workforce | SHRM & The Burning Glass Institute (2025)

WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE

Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Workforce | SHRM & The Burning Glass Institute (2025) | This landmark study reveals how GenAI will uniquely disrupt professional roles rather than blue-collar work, with finance, legal, and tech sectors facing the most significant transformation. The report provides critical guidance for business leaders navigating this unprecedented shift in which high-skilled knowledge work faces automation.

📊 DID YOU KNOW?

👀 DID YOU SEE?

✨ OVERVIEW

The SHRM and Burning Glass Institute report examines how generative AI represents a fundamentally different automation wave that targets high-skilled knowledge work rather than physical labour. Unlike previous technological disruptions, GenAI will affect professional roles that are long considered immune to automation. The research identifies three primary GenAI impacts: automating repetitive professional tasks, augmenting workers with AI-enhanced capabilities, and ultimately transforming job descriptions through new unit economics. The authors use a rigorous methodology that measures occupational exposure to GenAI capabilities to map disruption across industries, organisations, and regions. The study shows that the finance, professional services, and information systems sectors face the most significant exposure, with specific companies like Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, and Bloomberg particularly vulnerable. For CHROs and business leaders, this comprehensive analysis provides critical guidance on workforce planning, talent development, and strategic positioning during this unprecedented technological shift.

🧩 CONTEXT

Automation has consistently reshaped economic history since the Industrial Revolution. Beginning in the early 1990s, manufacturing automation replaced factory workers with robots, while the rise of e-commerce later displaced retail workers. The current wave driven by GenAI is extending and accelerating the ongoing automation of administrative and office support roles. What distinguishes this automation wave is its unprecedented targeting of sophisticated tasks typically performed by professionals rather than support workers. GenAI excels at generating coherent text, answering questions, producing code, creating images and videos, enhancing content, summarising information, and retrieving vast amounts of knowledge—directly overlapping with core functions of high-skilled knowledge work. GenAI's capabilities (text generation, coding assistance, information retrieval) and its limitations (lack of originality, limited critical thinking, low emotional intelligence) are essential for grasping its potential workforce impact.

🔍 WHY IT MATTERS

↳ Early GenAI adopters will see substantial productivity gains followed by workforce adjustments—As AI automates, augments, or transforms roles, the output will surge beyond corresponding demand growth, creating overstaffing in many industries. In competitive markets with labour oversupply, companies will implement workforce reductions. As hiring slows, the average workforce age will increase—a relationship demonstrated in Figure 2 shows an inverse correlation between employment growth and median age shifts. The data reveals that shrinking occupations age faster, challenging organisations' skill flexibility and knowledge exchange capabilities.

↳ GenAI will trigger significant economic redistribution—Productivity increases will disproportionately benefit those whose jobs remain and who can leverage AI capabilities. Given the potential for human labour displacement, GenAI will generate outsized returns for investors and senior employees at tech companies, many already among America's wealthiest, further intensifying wealth concentration. This wealth effect is already visible in financial markets—in April 2023, J.P. Morgan analysts attributed a $1.4 trillion market capitalisation increase and 45% profit growth to AI optimism. By 2025, Goldman Sachs projects global AI investments will reach nearly $200 billion, accelerating research and development timelines.

↳ The economic impacts will vary dramatically across workforce segments—Figure 4 in the report clearly shows that while previous automation waves primarily affected low-wage occupations (blue bars), GenAI uniquely targets high-wage professional roles (yellow bars). Legal professionals earning $124,540, computer specialists earning $108,130, and financial specialists earning $92,290 face significant exposure, while blue-collar workers may benefit from increased demand for premium goods and services that wealthier AI beneficiaries will purchase. This represents a fundamental inversion of previous automation patterns and their distributional consequences.

💡 KEY INSIGHTS

↳ GenAI will drive broad transformations across white-collar work—The report identifies specific high-risk occupations spanning business/legal (purchasing agents, management analysts, lawyers), STEM (programmers, data scientists, medical scientists), finance (insurance underwriters, accountants, financial analysts), writing/editing (writers, reporters, editors), social sciences (economists, political scientists), sales (insurance agents, advertising agents), and office administration roles. For instance, financial analysts spend substantial time analysing market trends and creating predictive models—tasks GenAI can streamline. Similarly, regulatory compliance tasks performed by auditors and lawyers can be accelerated with fewer errors, while software developers can use GenAI to generate code and debug programs.

↳ Industry transformation will follow occupational exposure patterns—The most vulnerable industries have GenAI exposure scores above 3.8, with mortgage and non-mortgage loan brokers (3.909), law offices (3.906), and investment banking (3.885) facing the highest risk. Companies like Morgan Stanley (3.913), Bank of America (3.902), and Northwestern Mutual (3.884) in finance, McKinsey (3.862), KPMG (3.858), and Deloitte (3.798) in professional services, and Bloomberg (3.818), Salesforce (3.800), and Google (3.793) in information systems show the highest exposure scores, requiring immediate strategic planning for GenAI-driven disruptions.

↳ Technology hubs will see accelerated economic growth—The data reveals that Silicon Valley metropolitan areas have already experienced extraordinary growth, with San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara seeing 110.0% per-capita income growth from 2011-2021, followed by San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley at 91.5%. The U.S. hosts 36 top 50 global technology companies and boasts cutting-edge academic institutions with substantial AI research investments. This positions the country to disproportionately benefit from GenAI adoption, further accelerating economic growth in tech-centred regions.

↳ The worker skills landscape will undergo a substantial shift—Skills increasing in importance include AI literacy, systems evaluation, data literacy, emotional intelligence, continuous learning, critical thinking, digital security, and creativity. Conversely, as GenAI excels at these tasks, basic capabilities like content creation, graphic design, research, web development, coding, and simple data analysis will decrease in value. Rather than wholesale job elimination, many roles will be augmented (like doctors using AI for improved diagnostics) or transformed (HR professionals shifting from administrative tasks to coaching and strategic functions).

🚀 ACTIONS FOR LEADERS

↳ Conduct a comprehensive GenAI exposure assessment—Evaluate your organisation's composition by analysing the prevalence of at-risk occupations within your workforce. Companies operating in industries with GenAI exposure scores above 3.8 (like financial or professional services) or with large concentrations of vulnerable roles should prepare for significant disruption. Use this assessment to identify specific departments and functions most likely to be transformed by GenAI and prioritise them for intervention.

↳ Map transformation pathways for each significant role—For each position in your organisation, determine whether it will be automated (tasks entirely replaced by GenAI), augmented (AI enhances human capabilities), or transformed (job description fundamentally reimagined). Create role-specific learning and development plans to build skills that complement rather than compete with AI capabilities. For instance, graphic designers could shift from basic creation to conceptual design and contextual adaptation, where human creativity remains superior to AI.

↳ Strategically realign your talent pipeline—Figure 8 in the report provides a framework for evaluating how GenAI will affect talent markets based on current shortages and AI impact levels. Positions in the "Continued Labor Shortages" quadrant (healthcare practitioners, skilled trades) require sustained recruiting focus, while those in "Labor Shortages Mitigated" (information security, actuaries) may become easier to staff. Prepare for surplus talent in business and financial roles while building pipelines for AI-fluent specialists who can manage and optimise GenAI systems.

↳ Implement gradual workforce transition strategies—Rather than relying solely on layoffs, deploy more subtle approaches like hiring freezes and natural attrition to minimise disruption. Develop comprehensive reskilling programs to reposition workers from automated roles to areas with stable demand. Create robust employee support systems, including mental health resources and transition assistance, to address the emotional toll of job insecurity. As the workforce ages due to decreased hiring, implement knowledge transfer initiatives to maintain organisational memory and learning capacity.

🔗 CONCLUSION

The SHRM and Burning Glass Institute report reveals that GenAI represents an unprecedented shift in automation—targeting high-skilled knowledge work rather than physical labour or routine tasks. While workforce disruptions will occur as productivity outpaces demand, the economic dislocation will likely be temporary, followed by price decreases, increased consumer spending, and eventual employment rebounding. Business leaders must prepare by evaluating their organisation's exposure, reassessing talent needs, and investing in worker development. The disruption will be particularly acute in financial services, professional services, and information technology while potentially benefiting blue-collar workers through increased demand for premium goods and services. By understanding the specific contours of GenAI's impact on their workforce and implementing strategic transitions, organisations can navigate this technological revolution successfully and position themselves for long-term advantage.

🎯 KEY TAKEAWAY

GenAI will transform high-skilled professional work like previous automation waves never did. Organisations that identify their exposure, prepare their workforce, and strategically adapt their talent strategy will convert what could be a disruptive threat into a sustainable competitive advantage.

Explore Our Themed Collections: Uncover a curated selection of current and past articles on our website.

Join 10,000+ Professionals: Follow me on LinkedIn for daily insights.