Society & Work
How many jobs are created by automation every day?
170 million new jobs are forecast by 2030, against 92 million displaced, a net gain of 78 million. That is a reversal: two years earlier the forecast was a net loss of 14 million, and the swing came from rising demand for green economy, care and AI specialist roles. Historic automation waves eventually created more than they destroyed, but the gain takes time and does not reach all workers equally: 41% of employers plan to cut headcount even while projecting new roles.
Roughly 1.2 jobs every minute.
Source: WEF Future of Jobs 2025; BLS Displaced Workers Survey 2024.
Last checked: 18 October 2026
Is your job at risk from automation - and what does the research actually say you should do?
Frey & Osborne (Oxford, 2013) estimated that 47% of US jobs were at high automation risk within two decades. That figure got enormous coverage and has since been revised downward: OECD (2016) found only about 9% of jobs were at high risk in developed economies, because the original study assessed entire occupations rather than individual tasks. Most jobs contain a mix of automatable and non-automatable work.
The pattern across studies is labour market polarisation rather than mass unemployment. Middle-skill routine jobs (bookkeeping, data entry, assembly-line work) face the highest risk. Both high-skill cognitive roles and low-skill manual dexterity jobs are more resilient. New jobs from automation concentrate in deployment, maintenance, AI oversight, and new product categories, all of which require formal technical training that displaced workers typically lack.
For most workers, risk is gradual rather than binary: roles are more likely to change than to disappear outright. Tasks within jobs automate before jobs do. Workers who identify which parts of their role are hardest to automate (judgment, relationship-building, ethical oversight) and deepen those specifically tend to be better positioned. AnythingCounter above tracks job creation; the displacement counter shows the other side.
Job creation from technology over time
Every major wave of automation has created more jobs than it destroyed in the end, from the industrial revolution through computerisation, with the WEF's latest outlook projecting 170 million new roles from technology adoption by 2030.
| Year | Rate | Jobs/day | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 1.2/min | 2K | Pre-LLM automation wave |
| 2024 | 1.2/min | 2K | AI specialist roles growing fastest; no single global count exists, rate derived from BLS regional data |
| 2027 (forecast) | 33/min | 48K | AI, green economy, digital roles |
| 2028 (forecast) | 51/min | 73K | Green economy, AI ops, and care roles accelerate |
Key automation job creation statistics
WEF Future of Jobs 2025 projects 170 million new jobs created globally by 2030, against 92 million displaced — a net gain of 78 million
WEF 2023 projected 69 million new jobs 2023-2027 vs. 83 million displaced (net -14M); the 2025 update is significantly more optimistic, driven by green economy and care roles
AI and machine learning specialist is the fastest-growing job category globally (WEF 2025); frontline roles (farmworkers, delivery drivers) show the largest absolute growth
47% of work tasks in 2025 are performed mainly by humans alone; by 2030, employers expect this to be nearly evenly split between humans, technology, and human-machine collaboration (WEF 2025)
Jobs created vs. jobs displaced by automation, today
WEF 2025 projects creation (170M by 2030) ahead of displacement (92M), reversing the 2023 edition's first-ever net-negative projection. Both sides of that flow are visible here simultaneously.
The job creation side of automation: what technology actually builds
Creation and destruction
Each WEF Future of Jobs Report projects gross creation and gross destruction. The 2018 edition: net +58M. The 2020 edition: net +12M. The 2023 edition: net -14M, the first negative projection. The 2025 edition: net +78M by 2030, driven by frontline roles, care work, and green economy positions. The swing from -14M to +78M in two years suggests the projections reflect the assumptions of the survey moment as much as any structural trend. On reskilling: 77% of employers plan to upskill workers, while 41% simultaneously plan to cut headcount through AI automation.
The geography of new jobs
Technology-driven roles (AI engineers, data scientists, green energy technicians, cybersecurity analysts) concentrate in high-income countries with strong educational infrastructure. Lower-income countries that built around manufacturing and data processing face displacement without proportional replacement. The global net figure masks local disruption: a community displaced by factory automation does not automatically produce AI engineers. WEF's own data shows the 56% wage premium available for workers with demonstrable AI skills, which underlines the size of the gap between old and new roles.
WEF, Oxford, OECD: what the major automation studies actually found
| Year | Finding | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | WEF Future of Jobs 2018: 75M jobs displaced by 2022; 133M new roles created, net positive of 58M | 133.0M new jobs projected 2018-2022 | World Economic Forum |
| 2020 | WEF Future of Jobs 2020: 85M jobs displaced by 2025; 97M new roles, net positive of 12M | 97.0M new jobs projected 2020-2025 | World Economic Forum |
| 2023 | WEF Future of Jobs 2023: 69M new jobs 2023-2027; 83M displaced; net -14M (2% of employment) — first negative net projection | 69.0M new jobs projected 2023-2027 | World Economic Forum |
| 2025 | WEF Future of Jobs 2025 (Jan 2025): 170M new jobs by 2030; 92M displaced; net +78M (7% of employment). Robotics/autonomous systems is largest net job displacer (-5M net). 77% of employers plan to upskill workers; 41% plan workforce reductions from AI automation | 170.0M new jobs projected by 2030 | World Economic Forum |
| 2026 | WEF Four Futures for Jobs in the New Economy (Jan 2026): 4 AI/talent scenarios through 2030; 56% wage premium available for workers with demonstrable AI skills; broadening digital access is the most transformative trend (60% of employers) | qualitative scenarios | World Economic Forum |
From the Luddites to ChatGPT: automation's history of disrupting work
- 2018WEF: 133M new jobs projected by 2022, still an optimistic net creation
- 2020WEF: 97M new jobs projected by 2025, net positive narrows to 12M
- 2023WEF: 69M new jobs, 83M displaced; first net negative projection; AI disruption broader than previous automation
- 2025WEF Future of Jobs 2025: 170M new jobs by 2030 vs. 92M displaced; net +78M — reversal driven by frontline, care and green economy roles; robotics/autonomous systems is the single largest net job displacer
In perspective
At the conservative BLS-anchored rate, a technology-linked job is created somewhere roughly every 50 seconds
WEF 2025 projects a net gain of 78 million jobs by 2030, larger than the entire workforce of Germany
Frequently asked questions
- How many jobs are created by automation and technology?
- The WEF Future of Jobs 2025 Report projects 170 million new jobs created globally by 2030, against 92 million displaced, a net gain of 78 million. The 2023 edition had projected a net loss of 14 million. The reversal is mainly driven by faster-than-expected growth in frontline, care, and green economy roles.
- What types of jobs are being created by technology?
- The fastest-growing categories in WEF's 2025 data: AI and machine learning specialists, sustainability analysts, information security analysts, fintech engineers, and data analysts. In absolute numbers, frontline roles (farmworkers, delivery drivers, construction workers) show the largest growth. Most of these new roles require substantially higher education or technical skills than the jobs being displaced.
Cite this rate
AnythingCounter derived rate, last checked October 2026: about 1.2 jobs per minute (about 1,728 jobs per day).
Method: Based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2024, converted to a per-minute rate (daily total ÷ 1,440).
Suggested citation: AnythingCounter, "Jobs gained because of machines," October 2026, https://anythingcounter.com/jobs-created-by-automation-per-day
Primary source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
How this number is calculated, and how much to trust it
The live counter uses a conservative estimate of ~1.2 new technology-linked jobs per minute globally, derived from recent AI/tech hiring data across regions (BLS and comparable surveys, 2024). This equates to roughly 630,000 new tech-driven roles per year. For context, WEF's Future of Jobs 2025 projects 170 million new jobs by 2030 (roughly 65 new jobs per minute), but that is a five-year forecast covering all automation-created roles broadly, and a sharp swing from the 2023 edition's 69 million; the counter uses a more conservative observed baseline. All figures carry significant uncertainty as no single official source tracks automation job creation globally.
The WEF Future of Jobs Report surveys Chief HR and Strategy Officers at over 1,000 employers (1,043 responses) across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies, covering more than 14 million workers. Published every two years, it is the most cited multi-industry forward projection on technology and employment. The McKinsey Global Institute 2023 report corroborates the broad direction. Both sources are employer forecasts, not measured outcomes, and the WEF's own track record across editions shows substantial revision from one report to the next.
Sources: see below. More detail on our methodology page.
Worth a look... Jobs lost to automation - Robots deployed - Automation statistics.