New research from the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of consultancy McKinsey, argues that while debates over artificial intelligence's impact on the workforce dominate headlines, the bigger challenge ahead is helping American workers find the most direct pathway into growing jobs.

The research finds that the U.S. economy will have more jobs by 2035 than it does today. The mix, however, will differ, requiring many workers to retrain or earn new credentials along the way.

Roughly 11 million Americans may need to leave a shrinking occupation for an entirely different one. Many will find work within the occupational group they already know, but an average of 770,000 workers a year will need to cross occupational lines over the next decade — 3.6 times the historical rate. COVID-19 produced a similar surge, but it lasted a year or two; this one is expected to last at least a decade.

Automation hits office and administrative support hardest

Consider the administrative assistant who has spent a decade keeping a department running. McKinsey's research finds that automation could take on 80 percent of the hours worked in office and administrative support, the occupational group facing the largest job losses by 2035.

For these workers, a pathway to a growing, better-paid job exists: project manager. The research measures such pathways by how much of the destination job a worker can already do, and here the overlap is greater than one might expect. Administrative assistants already plan, schedule, coordinate operations, document decisions, and manage stakeholders — tasks that occupy about 58 percent of what a project manager does. The remaining gap is real but manageable, covering project-scheduling methods, process improvement, forecasting, quality management, and business development.

One requirement, however, is a high hurdle: many project-manager postings demand a bachelor's degree and a professional certification. The transition offers a substantial wage gain — and demands large investments in schooling and credentialing to achieve it. The binding constraint is not whether these workers can do the job, but whether they are willing to invest thousands of dollars and several years to prove it.

Other transitions are harder

A dishwasher seeking to become a home health aide, a growing occupation, has only about 20 percent of the required skills. They would need to learn patient assistance and vital-sign assessment and complete a month of instruction to be certified — and many employers prefer a nursing assistant credential that takes longer still. Additionally, 92 percent of healthcare support jobs are in the bottom two wage quintiles, offering little room to improve their lifestyle.

A packager moving into production fabrication, another occupation likely to grow, faces a different obstacle. About 52 percent of their skills — lifting, quality control, and operating equipment like forklifts — would transfer, and the move comes with a meaningful raise. No credential requirement stands in the way. But fabrication requires mechanical assembly, drilling and fine skills, training on specific equipment, and advanced quality-control procedures.

Credentials are the most common hurdle

Credentials are required in 85 percent of growing jobs, making them the most common obstacle workers must overcome. About 38 percent are mandated by law, concentrated where safety and public trust are at stake. Another 47 percent reflect employer preferences for a degree, certificate, or job title — meaning nearly half the credential problem is a hiring convention rather than a safety rule, and conventions are easier to change.

Even short training programs can be unaffordable in the only currency that matters: forgone wages. A worker with modest savings or a child to care for can rationally decline a pathway that pays off handsomely over 10 years because it first requires months without pay.

Stakeholders can smooth the pathways

Employers have the biggest interest in making pathways to growing jobs more direct, particularly given the country's aging population. A company laying off administrative staff in one division while posting project-coordinator openings in another has created its own talent shortage. Hiring on demonstrated skills, dropping degree screens no law requires, using practical assessments, and building apprenticeships for existing workers costs less than hiring a credentialed outsider.

States can help by pruning occupational licensing requirements and making credentials modular and stackable, so short qualifications add up into longer ones. Colleges and worker-training agencies can design programs “backward” from what growing occupations require, and publish what their graduates earn. Governments can offer incentives such as subsidized education and tax incentives for individual retraining, along with tax breaks for companies that help workers attain new skills and credentials.

Employers are signaling the skills they want

Workers have their own interest in building skills, and employers are signaling what they want. Since 2022, postings demanding AI fluency have risen elevenfold, those seeking adaptability fivefold, and those requiring resilience, curiosity, and willingness to learn threefold. More than 70 percent of workers will need new skills even if they never change employers.

But none of these workers can shorten a licensing timeline, self-fund a year without pay, or buy time on a fabrication line. The administrative assistant already has more than half the skills a project manager needs. Whether they — and millions like them — acquire the rest depends largely on the employers and institutions that set the terms of work. The markers to watch are the ones the research names: degree screens dropped where no law requires them, licensing rules pruned, credentials made stackable, and training outcomes published. Making pathways to the jobs of the future easier to navigate is in the interest of companies and workers alike, and will pay off for households, communities, and the economy at large.

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