Demand for white-collar knowledge workers is declining, and many of these jobs will soon be obsolete or overhauled, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Artificial intelligence is not the only factor driving this revolution. The economic slowdown is prompting major U.S. corporations to become more efficient, and in many cases, that has meant eliminating middle-management jobs.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not the only one to proclaim 2023 "The Year of Efficiency."

Blue-collar services, construction and manufacturing workers, who were laid off during COVID, continue to be in high demand. Unlike other periods when the U.S. economy was in or on the precipice of a recession, job losses are not being led by these industries, which are the most sensitive to increases in interest rates.

Whole Foods and Walt Disney, for instance, in recent weeks laid off corporate staff but spared such customer-service jobs as grocery clerks and theme park attendants.

Retail workers, including salespeople and cashiers, as well as nurses and drivers, were the jobs most in demand in the first quarter, according to LinkedIn. Property-tax analysis company Ownwell, of Austin, Texas, for one, is hiring temporary contractors in this uncertain economy.

'Knowledge Workers Peak'

The brunt of job cuts are happening among white-collar jobs, says Employ America economist Preston Mui.

Accountants, software programmers, engineers, human resources staff, scientists, lawyers and upper management among those losing their positions—with the number of unemployed white-collar workers in these fields rising by 150,000 in the year ended in March, according to Employ America.

“We may be at the peak of the need for knowledge workers,” says Atif Rafiq, former chief digital officer at McDonald’s and Volvo. “We just need fewer people to do the same thing.”

“It could be the structure of the economy has changed,” Mui says.

Those who find themselves out of work because of AI might be able to find a silver lining in that they will be able to do more meaningful work, Rafiq suggests.

AI aside, companies also believe that eliminating bloated layers of bureaucracy will hasten decision-making—and profits.

“Companies realize they over-hired in the middle,” says Indeed economist Nick Bunker. “They’re paring things back.”

Where the Jobs Will—and Won’t Be

The U.S. Labor Department says two-thirds of the 20 occupations that will be most in demand through 2031 will pay around $31,000 a year and include home health and personal care aides, restaurant cooks, fast-food workers, wait staff and freight movers.

For those with a college degree, the greatest opportunities will be for software developers, operations managers and registered nurses, paying $100,000 a year and, for the most part, protected against incursion by AI.

Goldman Sachs estimates 300 million jobs will be impacted by AI, or 18% of the global work force, with most of the displacement in advanced economies, Forbes reports.

Research by the University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI, developer of ChatGPT, says white-collar workers earning up to $80,000 a year, most notably information processing jobs, will be the most affected by AI. People who could be displaced included those in finance, media, marketing and legal services.

Those who work in agriculture, mining, health care, manufacturing and factories will be the least impacted.

Inevitably, an uncertain economy, labor shifts started during COVID and the specter of AI, are all disrupting the work life of millions of Americans whose jobs will become redundant, diminished—or reimagined.