Will AI Take Your Job? Why the Shrinking Workforce Matters More for Your Money

Everyone’s terrified of AI taking their job.

I get it. The headlines are loud. Goldman Sachs says 300 million jobs could disappear. McKinsey says 30% of work hours are automatable. The World Economic Forum says 92 million jobs displaced by 2030.

Those are scary numbers. And I’m not here to tell you they’re wrong.

But I am here to tell you they’re missing the bigger story.

Because while everyone is watching the robot, nobody is watching the clock. And the clock is the thing that should actually keep you up at night.

Why Income Matters More Than Your Budget

Let me ask you something. When you sit down to think about your financial life, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Most people say budgeting. Or saving. Or “I need to stop spending so much at Target.”

But here’s the truth that almost nobody talks about. The single most important factor in your personal financial picture is not your budget. It’s not your savings rate. It’s not your 401k allocation.

It’s your income.

Income is the engine. Everything else is a dial on the dashboard. You can optimize your budget all day long, but if the engine isn’t running, the dials don’t matter.

That’s why at Stewardship we spend a lot of time thinking about income. Not just yours today. But what income looks like tomorrow. And ten years from now. And thirty years from now. Because if we’re going to help people build real, lasting wealth, we need to understand where income is headed.

And that means we need to talk about what’s actually happening to the American workforce.

The U.S. Workforce Is Shrinking. Here’s the Data.

Here’s a number for you. In 1997, the Baby Boomer generation had 66 million workers in the labor force. That was their peak. The largest wave of workers America has ever seen.

Today? About 12 million Boomers are still working. By 2030, that number is basically zero.

That’s not a prediction. That’s math. People age. People retire. People die.

Stay with me here. This is where it gets wild.

Gen X peaked at about 54 million workers. Millennials topped out around 57 million. Gen Z is climbing but they’re a smaller generation. Gen Alpha is still in middle school.

Every generation entering the workforce is smaller than the one leaving it.

The U.S. Census Bureau projects the population over 65 will grow from about 18% in 2024 to over 21% by 2035. Birth rates have been declining since the 1970s. And they’re not bouncing back.

So when you add it all up, if current trends hold, the total available workforce in America is going to drop. Significantly. We could be looking at going from roughly 151 million workers today to something closer to 99 million by 2050.

That’s 52 million fewer workers. Gone. Not because of AI. Because of biology.

Now. I want to be upfront here. That 99 million number is a projection, not a fact carved in stone. A major shift in immigration policy could change it. So could a cultural shift toward larger families, or some economic development I can’t even imagine right now. Projections are useful because they force you to think forward. But they’re not prophecy. Keep that in mind as we go.

How AI Will Actually Affect American Jobs

Yes. AI will take jobs. I believe that.

Here’s what I think is going to happen based on what I’m actually seeing right now. Not what the headlines say.

AI is going to crush entry-level positions. Data entry. Basic customer service. Junior admin work. Simple content creation. Routine analysis. Those jobs are either gone already or they’re going fast.

A lot more of those entry-level roles will disappear than anyone is currently comfortable admitting. Recent data backs this up. At large public tech companies, the percentage of employees aged 21 to 25 was cut in half between January 2023 and July 2025. That’s not a slow bleed. That’s a cliff.

But here’s what I’m also seeing. For people who aren’t in entry-level roles, AI is making them wildly more effective. I’m watching people do in two hours what used to take two days. AI isn’t replacing the experienced worker. It’s giving them superpowers.

Now, am I a doomsday guy about this? No. And here’s why.

I’ve been in finance for almost 30 years. I have watched technology transform this industry over and over and over again. The internet was going to kill financial advisors. Robo-advisors were going to kill financial advisors. Crypto was going to kill the entire financial system.

You know what I’ve learned? Two things.

First, adoption is always slower than everyone guesses. Always. Every single time. J.P. Morgan’s own research shows that as of mid-2025, less than 10% of firms report using AI regularly. Ten percent. After years of hype. McKinsey themselves said only 1% of companies have what they’d call “mature” AI deployment. One percent.

Second, the doomsday people are never right. Not once. Not about Y2K. Not about the internet killing retail. Not about remote work destroying cities. The fear always outpaces the reality.

So yes, AI will take jobs. But the speed and scale? I think the fear is way ahead of the facts.

And I could be wrong about that. Maybe adoption accelerates faster than anything we’ve seen before. Maybe some breakthrough next year changes the math entirely. I’m watching it closely and I’ll update my thinking if the data shifts. But right now? This is my best read.

AI Job Loss vs. Workforce Decline: What the Data Shows

I built a chart that puts all of this together. Labor demand on one line. Available workers on another. And I gave AI every advantage. Worst-case scenario. Goldman Sachs numbers. McKinsey’s most aggressive automation estimates. The whole thing.

Even if you let AI eliminate 72 million American jobs by 2050. Even if you give it that. Based on the inputs I used, there are still more jobs than there are people to fill them.

The gold line stays above the navy line all the way through.

Now, could something change that? Absolutely. A breakthrough in AI that nobody saw coming. A global pandemic that reshapes the labor market again. New government policies we can’t predict. Any of those could redraw the lines on that chart. I built it with the best data I have today, and I tried to be fair to both sides. But I hold it loosely.

The point isn’t that I can see the future. I can’t. Nobody can. The point is that there’s a massive demographic story unfolding right now that almost nobody is paying attention to because they’re too busy being scared of robots.

The workforce is shrinking faster than AI can replace it. At least right now. At least based on everything I can see. That’s the story nobody is telling you.

I Could Be Wrong. And That’s OK.

I could be wrong. About parts of it, maybe all of it.

Not wrong about the demographic data. Those numbers are real. People who were born were born. People who weren’t, weren’t. That part is math.

But the projections? The pace of AI adoption? How fast companies actually replace humans with software? Whether immigration policy changes everything in the next five years? Whether some technology I haven’t even imagined yet reshapes the entire conversation?

I don’t know. Nobody does.

What I’m giving you here is my best read of the data as it exists right now. These are the datapoints I think are worth paying attention to.

But I hold it loosely. Because if 30 years in finance has taught me anything, it’s that the future has a sense of humor. It never shows up the way the spreadsheet said it would.

So take this as a starting point. A way to think. Not a guarantee of what will happen.

How to Protect Your Income in the Age of AI

Let me get personal for a minute.

I was sitting across from an individual recently. Mid to late 30s. Kids. Good job. And the first thing he asked me was, “Should I be worried about AI taking my job?”

You know what I told him? The same thing I’m about to tell you.

Worry less about the robot. Worry more about being so good at what you do that a robot only makes you better.

As a parent, here’s what this means for how Jodie and I are raising our kids. I’m not panicking about AI taking their future jobs. But I am changing my approach.

I’m prioritizing experience over diplomas. Over certificates. Over the classical “get the degree and you’ll be fine” path.

Because here’s what I think is coming. AI is going to wipe out a lot of the entry-level positions my kids would have used to get their foot in the door. The internship that teaches you how an office works. The junior analyst role where you learn to think critically. Those may not exist the same way.

So I’m getting my kids experience NOW. Real experience. Working with people. Solving real problems. Building things. Leading things. Because it’s the people who combine deep experience with AI tools that are going to thrive. Not the people with a degree and no reps.

AI is a tool. The best hammer in the world is useless if you’ve never built anything.

And for me personally? I’m continuing to follow the same playbook I’ve been running for years.

Find a need and fill it. Do it in a way that actually serves other people. I believe we were made to serve each other, and that conviction drives everything I just laid out. It’s not a business strategy. It’s a life strategy. And it happens to be the best income strategy I’ve ever found. Not a side hustle hack. Not a passive income scheme. Find real humans with real problems and solve them with everything you’ve got.

Then with whatever income you earn, follow two rules.

Consistently invest in real estate through a mortgage payment. And consistently invest in a general brokerage account.

That’s it. Two things. Over a long period of time.

I’ve been doing both for years. I’ve watched them compound. I’ve seen it work for countless people. It’s not complicated. But it works.

And when the fear sets in? When the AI headlines get loud? When the market dips? When it feels like the sky is falling?

I just do those two things more.

More serving. More investing. More reps.

That’s the move.

And if the fear is getting loud in your head right now? Good. That means you’re paying attention. Now channel it into something productive.

Find a need. Fill it. Invest consistently. Repeat.

That’s not just how you survive what’s coming. That’s how you thrive through it.