Up to 3m low-skilled jobs could disappear in the UK by 2035 because of automation and AI, according to a report by a leading educational research charity.
The jobs most at risk are those in occupations such as trades, machine operations and administrative roles, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) said.
Highly skilled professionals, on the other hand, were forecast to be more in demand as AI and technological advances increase workloads “at least in the short to medium term”. Overall, the report expects the UK economy to add 2.3m jobs by 2035, but unevenly distributed.
The findings stand in contrast to other recent research suggesting AI will affect highly skilled, technical occupations such as software engineering and management consultancy more than trades and manual work.
Research from King’s College published in October estimated that “higher-paying firms” suffered job losses of roughly 9.4% between 2021 and 2025, with much of this period falling after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022.
The UK government lists management consultants, psychologists and legal professionals among the occupations “most exposed to AI”, whereas “sports players”, “roofers” and “bricklayers” are less likely to be replaced.
Last week, the law firm Clifford Chance revealed it was laying off 10% of business services staff at its London base – about 50 roles – attributing the change partly to AI. The head of PwC also publicly walked back plans to hire 100,000 people between 2021 and 2026, saying “the world is different” and artificial intelligence had changed its hiring needs.
Jude Hillary, one of the report’s authors, said that NFER’s work – which is based on longer-term economic modelling of the UK labour market – suggests predictions about AI-driven job losses may be premature.
He suggested layoffs attributed to the uptake of AI may be driven by a sluggish UK economy, factors such as rising national insurance costs and employers being risk-averse.
“There’s this general uncertainty about where things are going, how long it takes to improve. There’s lots of talk about AI and automation without any real substance about it. Lots of employers are worried about it,” Hillary said.
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“And probably what’s happening is a lot of employers are just sitting tight, I would say.”
Hillary said he expected the overall effects of AI on the UK workforce to be complex: increasing the demand for some professional roles; decreasing the demand for many entry-level roles; and eroding the demand for many lower-skilled professions. This latter, he said, was most concerning, as it would be difficult for people who lost lower-skilled jobs to reskill appropriately in a changing economy.
“The additional jobs that we’re getting in the labour market tend to be professional and associate professionals … Displaced workers, the one to three million that we talk about in our report, face significant barriers to get back into the labour market,” he said.
