{"id":118339,"date":"2026-10-07T23:09:39","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T03:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=118339"},"modified":"2026-10-07T23:10:57","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T03:10:57","slug":"worried-technology-will-make-your-job-obsolete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/personal-growth-and-life-skills\/worried-technology-will-make-your-job-obsolete\/","title":{"rendered":"Worried Technology Will Make Your Job Obsolete? 27% Are"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'>\n                <div class=\"twp-read-time\">\n                \t<i class=\"booster-icon twp-clock\"><\/i> <span>Read Time:<\/span>11 Minute, 35 Second                <\/div>\n\n            <\/div><p>There is a particular thought that shows up at odd moments. Not during a crisis. Usually during something completely ordinary &mdash; waiting for a file to load, or watching a tool finish in four seconds a task that used to take you most of a morning.<\/p>\n\n<p>The thought is: <em>someone could build a version of this that does not need me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p>You push it away. It comes back the next week.<\/p>\n\n<p>If you have had that thought, you are now in measurable company. More workers are having it than at any point since anyone started counting.<\/p>\n\n<h2>27% of Workers Now Worry Technology Will Make Their Job Obsolete<\/h2>\n\n<p>Every August, Gallup asks employed adults a short list of questions about what worries them at work. In the survey run from 3 to 24 August 2026, 27% said they were worried their job would become obsolete because of technology. That is the highest reading since the question was first asked in 2017, when it sat at 13%. (<a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/714386\/worry-technology-making-job-obsolete-hits-new-high.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gallup&#8217;s release and full topline<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n<p>Two things are worth knowing before that number gets away from us.<\/p>\n\n<p>It is based on 507 employed adults in the United States, and Gallup puts the maximum margin of sampling error on that group at about six percentage points. That is a small sample describing a very large feeling.<\/p>\n\n<p>And the 2017 version of the question was worded slightly differently &mdash; &#8220;obsolete or unnecessary because of technology&#8221; rather than simply &#8220;obsolete&#8221; &mdash; a detail Gallup footnotes in its own topline and almost nobody quotes. So &#8220;roughly double since 2017&#8221; is the honest way to say it. &#8220;Exactly double&#8221; is not.<\/p>\n\n<p>The record is real. It is also not the interesting part.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>It Is Not Even the Biggest Worry on the List<\/h2>\n\n<p>Here is the whole list, in the order workers ranked it this year:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>33%<\/strong> &mdash; worried their benefits will be reduced<\/li>\n<li><strong>27%<\/strong> &mdash; worried their job will become obsolete because of technology<\/li>\n<li><strong>24%<\/strong> &mdash; worried they will be laid off<\/li>\n<li><strong>21%<\/strong> &mdash; worried their wages will be reduced<\/li>\n<li><strong>21%<\/strong> &mdash; worried their hours will be cut back<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>More people are worried about losing part of their benefits than about losing their job to a machine. That tells you something about which fears actually live in a household budget.<\/p>\n\n<p>But look where technology sits: above being laid off. Last August those two were the other way round &mdash; 25% worried about layoffs, 20% about obsolescence. In a single year, the abstract fear overtook the concrete one.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Every Other Worry Is Below Its Own Record. Only This One Is At Its Record.<\/h2>\n\n<p>This is the part that changed how the whole survey reads to me, and it is sitting in plain sight in Gallup&#8217;s trend tables, which for most of these questions run back to 1997.<\/p>\n\n<p>Worry about being laid off peaked at 31% in 2009. It is 24% now.<\/p>\n\n<p>Worry about benefits being cut peaked at 46% in 2009. It is 33% now.<\/p>\n\n<p>Worry about wages being reduced peaked at 33% in 2011. It is 21% now.<\/p>\n\n<p>Worry about hours being cut peaked at 30% in 2011. It is 21% now.<\/p>\n\n<p>Every single one of the money fears is well below where it stood in the aftermath of the last great wave of job losses. By the standards of 2009, this is a relatively calm workforce on the things that empty a bank account.<\/p>\n\n<p>The one item at its all-time high is the one that is not about money at all.<\/p>\n\n<p>One honest limit on that: the technology question was not asked before 2017, so nobody knows what it would have read in 2009. We cannot say it is the highest ever &mdash; only the highest in the nine years it has been measured. That is a smaller claim, and it is the true one.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Line Does Not Climb the Way You Would Expect<\/h2>\n\n<p>If the worry were simply tracking the technology, you would expect a smooth climb as the tools got better. It is not smooth at all.<\/p>\n\n<p>13% in 2017. 15% in 2018. 17% in 2019. Then it fell back to 15% in 2021. It jumped to 22% in 2023. Then &mdash; and this is the strange bit &mdash; it <em>dropped<\/em> to 20% in 2025, during the years when the tools were improving fastest and the headlines were loudest. Then it leapt seven points in a single year to land at 27%.<\/p>\n\n<p>Worry went down in the stretch when capability went up, and then spiked a year later. A survey can tell you that happened. It cannot tell you why, and Gallup does not claim to know.<\/p>\n\n<p>Which is worth holding onto, because it suggests this number is not a clean readout of how replaceable anyone actually is. It may be measuring the conversation about the technology as much as the technology itself.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Who Is Most Worried Is Not Who the Story Says<\/h2>\n\n<p>The dominant version of this story has been that the machines are coming for knowledge work &mdash; the degree holders, the desk jobs, the people who were told education was the safe bet.<\/p>\n\n<p>Gallup&#8217;s own breakdown says something more awkward. Worry rose to 25% among college graduates, up six points. Among workers without a degree, it rose to 29%, up eight points. The group supposedly least exposed is the more worried group, and the gap widened in their direction this year.<\/p>\n\n<p>Age splits harder than education does. Among workers aged 18 to 44, 34% are worried. Among those 45 and over, 19% are. The people with the most working years ahead of them are close to twice as worried as the people nearest the exit.<\/p>\n\n<p>That makes sense if you think about what is actually being asked. A 25-year-old is not forecasting next quarter. They are trying to guess whether the thing they are learning will still exist in thirty years, and nobody can hand them that answer. The same squeeze shows up in the hiring data, where the contraction has landed hardest on people who <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/personal-growth-and-life-skills\/why-entry-level-jobs-are-disappearing\/\">have not started their careers yet rather than on those already working<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p>And the figure that almost never gets printed: 72% of workers said they were <em>not<\/em> worried their job would become obsolete. The record-setting number is still very much the minority position.<\/p>\n\n<h2>The Question Under the Question<\/h2>\n\n<p>None of those numbers touch the part that actually keeps people awake.<\/p>\n\n<p>Because the fear is usually not &#8220;I will lose income.&#8221; That fear is horrible, but it has a shape. You can make a plan against it. You can cut costs, retrain, borrow time from someone.<\/p>\n\n<p>The one with no plan attached is quieter: <em>if this work can be done without me, what was I for?<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p>And that question only has teeth if your worth was living inside the work to begin with.<\/p>\n\n<p>There is something odd about the oldest account anyone wrote down of how people got here. It does not open with the job. In that account a person is made deliberately, described as carrying something of God, and only then handed a garden to look after. The work is real, and it is given with dignity &mdash; but it arrives second, to someone who already counted. The order is doing a great deal of quiet work in that sentence.<\/p>\n\n<p>Which is not the same as saying your job does not matter. It plainly does. It is just not the thing holding you up.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What You Can Actually Do About It This Week<\/h2>\n\n<p>None of this costs money, requires a therapist, or needs a good week.<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Ask the better question about your own work.<\/strong> Not &#8220;is my field exposed to technology&#8221; &mdash; almost every field is. Ask whether a tool does the whole task instead of you, or whether it just makes a person faster at something a person still has to do. Those two look identical from the outside and go in opposite directions. It is also worth knowing that published exposure lists are not forecasts: when one official classification <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/personal-growth-and-life-skills\/ai-exposure-list-206-jobs\/\">put 206 jobs in the top exposure tier<\/a>, the agency itself said it was not a prediction, and several of those jobs are projected to grow.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Spend one hour using the thing you are afraid of.<\/strong> Fear of a tool you have never touched is almost always larger than the tool. One honest hour usually tells you more than a year of headlines.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Write the fear down in one sentence.<\/strong> Not &#8220;AI is scary.&#8221; The actual sentence, with your actual job in it. Vague dread cannot be argued with. A specific sentence can be checked, and often turns out to be smaller than it felt.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Put one thing in your week that has nothing to do with being useful.<\/strong> A walk, a meal with someone, a conversation that produces nothing. If every hour you value is an hour that produced something, the fear has an easy target.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Say it out loud to one person.<\/strong> This particular worry is unusually private, because admitting it sounds like admitting you are replaceable. It is not. 27% of the people around you are carrying it too.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>If the harder question underneath all this is the one about what you are actually for, our free <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-is-my-purpose\/\">What Is My Purpose? assessment<\/a> is a reasonable place to think it through. It takes a few minutes and it does not ask for a CV.<\/p>\n\n<p><strong>A good place to start:<\/strong> <em>The Beginner&#8217;s Guide to Feeling God&#8217;s Presence Every Day<\/em>. A short video guide and a companion PDF about noticing God in the ordinary parts of a week &mdash; the commute, the kitchen, the desk on a slow afternoon. <a href=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/free-video-course-feeling-gods-presence\/?utm_source=wordpress&amp;utm_medium=article-inline&amp;utm_content=hero\">Get the free guide<\/a>. Free.<\/p>\n\n<p>Nobody reading this can tell you what the work will look like in ten years. The people building the tools cannot tell you either, which is a thing they say far more often than it gets reported.<\/p>\n\n<p>But the question underneath the worry has an answer that does not depend on the forecast. Whatever happens to the job, it was never the thing that made you worth something. That part was settled a long time before the work showed up.<\/p>\n\n<h2>Questions People Are Asking<\/h2>\n\n<h3>What percentage of workers worry technology will make their job obsolete?<\/h3>\n<p>27% of employed US adults said they were worried their job would become obsolete because of technology, in a Gallup Work and Education survey conducted 3 to 24 August 2026. That is up seven percentage points from 20% in 2025, and roughly double the 13% recorded when Gallup first asked the question in 2017. The figure is based on 507 employed adults, with a maximum margin of sampling error of about six percentage points. 72% said they were not worried.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Is worry about technology taking jobs at a record high?<\/h3>\n<p>It is the highest reading since Gallup began asking the question in 2017, at 27% in August 2026. It is not possible to call it an all-time record, because the question was not asked before 2017 and so there is no comparable reading from earlier periods such as the 2009 recession. The wording also changed slightly after 2017, when the question referred to a job becoming &#8220;obsolete or unnecessary&#8221; because of technology.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Which job worry do workers rank highest?<\/h3>\n<p>Reduced benefits ranks highest. In Gallup&#8217;s August 2026 survey of 507 employed US adults, 33% were worried their benefits would be reduced, 27% that their job would become obsolete because of technology, 24% that they would be laid off, 21% that their wages would be reduced, and 21% that their hours would be cut back. Technology-driven obsolescence ranked second, having moved above the fear of layoffs for the first time in the survey&#8217;s recent readings.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Are younger workers more worried about losing their jobs to technology?<\/h3>\n<p>Yes, by a wide margin. Gallup&#8217;s August 2026 survey found 34% of employed adults aged 18 to 44 worried that technology would make their job obsolete, compared with 19% of those aged 45 and over. Younger workers face a longer horizon over which a role could change or disappear, and recent hiring data shows the sharpest contraction among early-career workers rather than experienced ones.<\/p>\n\n<h3>Are college graduates more worried about technology than non-graduates?<\/h3>\n<p>No. In Gallup&#8217;s August 2026 survey, 29% of employed US adults without a college degree worried that technology would make their job obsolete, compared with 25% of college graduates. Concern rose in both groups over the previous year, by eight points among non-graduates and six points among graduates. This runs against the common framing that automation anxiety is concentrated among degree-holding knowledge workers.<\/p>\n\n<h2>What Do You Think?<\/h2>\n\n<p>Here is the open question: is a worry number like 27% actually measuring risk, or is it measuring how loud the conversation about the technology has got? Those are very different things, and reasonable people land on opposite sides of it. Tell us which one you think this is in the comments.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"convertkit-form wp-block-convertkit-form\" style=\"\"><script async data-uid=\"6491fb8269\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.kit.com\/6491fb8269\/index.js\" data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" data-no-defer=\"1\" data-no-optimize=\"1\" nowprocket><\/script><\/div>\n\n\n<h2>Share This<\/h2>\n\n<blockquote><p>27% of workers now fear technology will make their job obsolete &#8211; a record. The figure nobody prints: 72% do not. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/personal-growth-and-life-skills\/worried-technology-will-make-your-job-obsolete\/<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote><p>Nobody quotes this bit: worry about technology making your job obsolete actually FELL between 2023 and 2025, while the tools were improving fastest, then jumped seven points in a single year. That line is not tracking the technology. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/personal-growth-and-life-skills\/worried-technology-will-make-your-job-obsolete\/<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote><p>Everyone says the machines are coming for degree holders. Gallup asked, and 29% of workers without a degree are worried about technology making their job obsolete, against 25% of graduates. The story has the wrong people in it. https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/personal-growth-and-life-skills\/worried-technology-will-make-your-job-obsolete\/<\/p><\/blockquote>        <div class=\"booster-block booster-reactions-block\">\n            <div class=\"twp-reactions-icons\">\n                \n                <div class=\"twp-reacts-wrap\">\n                    <a react-data=\"be-react-1\" post-id=\"118339\" class=\"be-face-icons un-reacted\" href=\"javascript:void(0)\">\n                        <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/booster-extension\/\/assets\/icon\/happy.svg\" alt=\"Happy\" title=\"\">\n                    <\/a>\n                    <div class=\"twp-reaction-title\">\n                        Happy                    <\/div>\n                    <div class=\"twp-count-percent\">\n                                                    <span style=\"display: none;\" class=\"twp-react-count\">0<\/span>\n                   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Gallup&#8217;s own numbers say something more interesting than the headline does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":118338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5222,5223,3715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bgodinspired-business-news","category-bgodinspired-technology-news","category-personal-growth-and-life-skills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118339"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118341,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118339\/revisions\/118341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}