A Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee minority staff report has sounded an urgent alarm about the pace at which artificial intelligence and automation might transform the American workforce, warning that these technologies could “destroy nearly 100 million U.S. jobs in a decade,” according to the Senate report.
The report argues that powerful corporations are rapidly leveraging AI and automation to create what lawmakers call an “artificial labor” force, a shift driven in part by large language models like ChatGPT. The committee’s analysis describes this change as moving with “unprecedented speed,” potentially reshaping the entire economy in less than ten years—a rate far outstripping previous major upheavals, such as the agricultural and industrial revolutions, which unfolded over centuries.
According to calculations based on a ChatGPT-driven model, AI and automation could eliminate nearly 100 million jobs in ten years, affecting 89% of fast food and counter workers, 64% of accountants, and 47% of truck drivers. Given that the U.S. workforce stood at roughly 163.4 million in August 2025, the report suggests this scenario could result in unemployment climbing to over 61%, a figure that would dwarf even the bleakest periods in U.S. economic history.
The dramatic forecasts are backed by additional industry and research insights. The Senate report notes that McKinsey, just two years ago, estimated new AI tools could “automate work activities” that account for up to 70% of employees’ current tasks. Dario Amodei, CEO of AI company Anthropic, is on record stating that these advances could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar positions, pushing unemployment as high as 20% within five years. Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Scott, has projected that by 2030, AI-generated code might replace 95% of all human coding at his company.
Yet despite these alarming predictions, the committee emphasized that the future remains murky. “There is tremendous uncertainty about the real capabilities of AI and automation and their effects on the economy,” the committee noted, underscoring the unpredictable nature of these technologies. To further illustrate the potential scope, the committee employed ChatGPT to estimate the impact on various professions, finding that up to 89% of fast food jobs, 62% of retail sales roles, 59% of cashier positions, and substantial portions of other fields could be automated.
The reliance on ChatGPT for these figures drew scrutiny, though. The Senate report acknowledged that the system is a sophisticated text generator—not a reasoning tool capable of evaluating the true validity of its output. The committee cautioned that the profound uncertainty associated with using AI in this way cannot be overlooked.
Historical research adds context to these concerns. A 2024 study from MIT comparing Census Bureau employment data to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filings found that since 1980, technological change has overall reduced the number of jobs in the U.S., contradicting the common narrative that technology offsets the positions it eliminates.
Even as technology giants pour billions into AI, the impact on jobs is already visible. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told Bloomberg TV that his bank spends $2 billion a year and employs 2,000 people on generative AI, a program delivering about $2 billion in returns—an amount he described as potentially just “the tip of the iceberg.” Dimon said these investments would certainly affect jobs, explaining that while JPMorgan retrains and redeploys workers, automation and AI could mean fewer jobs in some areas of the business.
The Senate committee also highlighted examples of major corporations enacting large-scale layoffs, citing automation and AI advancements as enablers for replacing human labor. Still, the limits of the technology are also apparent: an MIT study found that 95% of corporate AI initiatives ultimately fail.
For industries like commercial real estate, the implications are complex. “Commercial real estate has long been built on relationships, judgment, and local insight,” Carey Heyman, managing principal of real estate at CPA firm CLA, told GlobeSt.com. He emphasized that CRE professionals will need to learn to work alongside AI to succeed.
Even if the most extreme forecasts do not materialize, the Senate committee concluded, the scale of potential job loss remains daunting. Losing just a tenth of the 100 million jobs predicted would mean a perpetual unemployment rate exceeding 6%, with profound consequences across all sectors of the economy, including commercial real estate, which would feel the impact in every asset class.
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