Bank of America argues AI will augment rather than eliminate jobs, citing 85 years of labor market data showing 60% of today's U.S. jobs didn't exist in 1940

BofA's global research team published a report on April 28 stating that roughly 840 million jobs globally—about one in four—are exposed to generative AI, but distinguished between exposure and actual elimination risk: 13% of global jobs fall into 'augmentation' (where AI enhances workers) versus just 2.3% with genuine automation potential.

The bank cites historical precedent: agriculture fell from roughly 40% of U.S. employment in the early 1900s to 1% today; data scientists and cloud developers barely existed 20 years ago but are now mainstream. When ATMs proliferated in the 1970s and '80s, lower operating costs allowed banks to open more branches, and bank tellers shifted into sales and customer service roles rather than disappearing entirely.

However, the report acknowledges agentic AI—systems that autonomously execute multi-step tasks and orchestrate entire workflows—as a 'more structurally disruptive force' that could shift AI from a task-level assistant to 'AI as worker itself,' risking job displacement beyond historical patterns.

BofA called for policymakers to design 'transition frameworks that cushion short-term disruption' through wage insurance, enhanced unemployment benefits, and reskilling incentives, while warning that nearly 75% of workers displaced by AI won't collect unemployment benefits, leaving support dangerously thin.