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Employment in the professional, scientific, and technical services sector—which employs software developers and data scientists—is expected to increase by more than 10% between 2023 and 2033, more than double the national average.
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The proliferation of artificial intelligence is expected to be a primary driver of growing demand for tech workers in the next decade.
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Data scientist, information security analyst, and information research scientist—all essential for the development and management of AI—are expected to be some of the fastest-growing jobs in the country.
The proliferation of artificial intelligence has understandably set off alarm bells for workers concerned about losing their jobs to a computer.
Professional, scientific, and technical services sector workers, previously insulated from the automation of work, may be particularly stressed. The sector, which includes jobs in software development and data science, boasts some of the highest rates of on-the-job generative AI use, according to AI research firm Anthropic.
But tech workers might not have as much to worry about as one might think, according to new research by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment in the professional, scientific, and technical services sector is forecast to increase by 10.5% from 2023 to 2033, more than double the national average.
According to the BLS, the impact AI will have on tech-sector employment is highly uncertain. For one, AI is adept at coding and related tasks. But at the same time, as digital systems become more advanced and essential to day-to-day life, more software developers, data managers, and the like are going to be needed to manage those systems.
“Although it is always possible that AI-induced productivity improvements will outweigh continued labor demand, there is no clear evidence to support this conjecture,” according to BLS researchers.
Within the sector, employment in the computer systems design industry is projected to grow the fastest, increasing by nearly 20% over the decade. The “continued adoption of advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence” is expected to be one of the main drivers of demand for workers in this industry, according to the BLS report’s author Elka Torpey.
At the occupation level, data scientists are expected to have the fastest employment growth, with an increase of nearly 42%. That’s faster than a BLS forecast from August, when researchers estimated data science employment would increase 36%, making it the fourth-fastest growing occupation in the country. Other fast-growing tech occupations include information security analyst (+41%) and computer and information research scientist (+32%).
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