Anthropic's economic model maps knowledge-worker unemployment across three scenarios

Anthropic has published an economic model with three scenarios for the US economy through 2030. In the modest scenario, the effect of AI resembles that of the internet: GDP grows slightly, wages hold steady, and knowledge workers fall from 62.2 to 59.7 percent of the workforce. In the middle scenario, growth doubles but knowledge-worker wages stagnate; programmers and call center staff would have to move into work such as electrician or nurse, and unemployment rises because that switch is hard. In the extreme scenario, output doubles every 4.5 years, knowledge-worker unemployment reaches 17.9 percent, and labor's share of GDP falls from 60 to 45 percent. Chief executive Dario Amodei's May 2025 warning that up to half of entry-level office jobs could disappear and unemployment could reach 10 to 20 percent lands in that extreme case.