MIT Warns AI Can Already Replace 11.7% of American Workers

• A joint MIT–Oak Ridge National Laboratory simulation shows that current AI systems can already perform tasks equivalent to 11.7% of the U.S. labor force, representing $1.2 trillion in annual wages, with only 2.2% ($211 billion) visible in tech-sector disruptions and the rest hidden in finance, health care, and administrative roles.
• The Iceberg Index models all 151 million U.S. workers as individual agents with 32,000+ skills across 923 occupations and 3,000 counties, providing policymakers with county-level exposure maps and an interactive platform to test reskilling, training, and technology-adoption scenarios.
• Multiple states, including Tennessee, Utah, and North Carolina, are actively using the Index to shape official AI workforce plans, targeting investments to vulnerable skills and regions well beyond coastal tech hubs.

A comprehensive labor-market simulation developed jointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has determined that current artificial intelligence systems are already capable of performing tasks equivalent to 11.7% of the entire U.S. workforce, representing $1.2 trillion in annual wages. The exposure is concentrated in finance, health care, and professional services, with substantial hidden risk in routine administrative functions that have received far less public attention than layoffs in technology roles.

The modeling framework, known as the Iceberg Index, treats all 151 million U.S. workers as individual agents, each assigned specific skills, occupations, tasks, and geographic locations. It incorporates more than 32,000 distinct skills across 923 occupations and all 3,000 counties, then evaluates the extent to which today’s deployed AI systems can execute those skills at human-level performance. The results separate the highly visible 2.2% of wage exposure ($211 billion) already manifesting in computing and information-technology occupations from the far larger submerged portion in human resources, logistics, finance, and office support.

Rather than forecasting precise job-loss timelines, the index provides a real-time, skills-based exposure map and an interactive environment for testing policy interventions. States can adjust variables such as reskilling budgets, technology-adoption rates, and training-program focus to observe simulated effects on local employment, wage flows, and gross domestic product at the county or even census-block level.

Several states have moved rapidly to integrate the platform into active policy development. Tennessee has formally incorporated Iceberg findings into its November 2025 AI Workforce Action Plan, while Utah is finalizing a parallel report. North Carolina legislators, led by state Sen. DeAndrea Salvador, have used the tool to identify county-specific skill vulnerabilities and to model the economic consequences of different investment allocations.

The simulations reveal that AI exposure is broadly distributed across the country, including in inland and rural areas whose economies remain anchored in health care, manufacturing, transportation, and nuclear energy – sectors that retain significant physical-task components and therefore some near-term insulation from pure software automation. Policymakers in those regions are using the platform are increasingly focusing on scenarios that combine AI augmentation with robotics and domain-specific assistants to raise productivity rather than simply displace workers.

By creating what researchers describe as a digital twin of the national labor market and powering it with Frontier, currently the world’s leading supercomputer, the Iceberg collaboration has shifted the analytical baseline from backward-looking unemployment statistics to forward-looking, policy-testable exposure assessment. The platform is now positioned as an ongoing sandbox for federal and state officials preparing large-scale workforce investments, enabling them to target resources toward the precise skills and geographies where disruption is already technically feasible, even if it has not yet materialized in corporate balance sheets or official employment data.

WallStreetPit does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

• Bulenox: Get 45% to 91% OFF ... Use Discount Code: UNO
• Risk Our Money Not Yours | Get 50% to 90% OFF ... Use Discount Code: MMBVBKSM