How the Birth Rate Is Our Crystal Ball for Predicting the Future of Work

I had multiple conversations over the weekend about the current and future state of work in the United States.

Speaking with a seasoned attorney, a young attorney in her 30s, and a software engineer with seven years in the field, we quickly arrived at the topic of AI. The software engineer had a company mandate to use AI for coding. The dissonance in using a tool poised to take his job was not lost on him. But it was mandated and he found it useful, albeit reliably fallible, which provided him enough hope of maintaining future essentiality.

He detailed how he tried to keep his skills sharp while having AI do a portion of grunt work that would have previously acted as routine foundational practice for him. This was critical for career longevity, as well as disruptions in service.

He imagined what would happen if their AI tool was inaccessible. First, no work would be accomplished as using AI was a company expectation. The engineers would be flouncing around elsewhere. If AI went out and they had to go back to manual coding, he could picture reading through AI code and finding all sorts of unnecessary code. Even when AI gets it right, it isn’t the most efficient. He also wondered if some engineers would be less productive. Especially those newer to their careers who haven’t had years of routine foundational practice.

The attorney has been cautious in her AI use for this exact reason. Mainly using it for research purposes or formatting. But it was not a stretch to imagine AI evolving to take over her job. Additionally, there were things she assigned to AI that a paralegal could normally do, although she does not have paralegals at her firm. This was a fact prior to the popularization of AI, but the implication stands. And so it follows, if a paralegal is given this type of work, it would be the routine foundational practice needed to build a career.

At this point, the seasoned attorney asked, “But what if these paralegals are now using AI as well? Are we to expect that every industry using AI will have less practiced and skilled professionals in the future?”

The question hung in the air.

As a digital marketer, I have considered the implications of AI on my industry for quite some time. I, too, received a company mandate to use it. I, too, have found it reliably fallible and still requiring someone with writing and comprehension skills to review it. Someone who has honed these skills over a long career starting with internships in college, for example.

College enrollment has declined and cost has increased over the years.

There’s been a resurgence in attendance but rising costs shape the type of institution and degree chosen. While there are more jobs that don’t require higher education, it is still the standard and shows no significant signs of changing. What is changing is the youth’s perspective on work.

The newer generations have pushed to end things like unpaid internships and mandatory overtime, a shift expertly conveyed in S2E12 of The Pitt wherein a medical student leaves exactly when her shift is over. A resident tries to pressure her to stay, to which she replies that she isn’t being paid and she has boundaries. For context, most medical students are not paid during their trainings, but continue to pay school tuition concurrently.

There is a debate happening all over the country and all over the world about what this and commercial AI mean for the future of work. Boomers used to stay at a company for years because there were incentives like pensions and promotions. These incentives have largely eroded due to the tech boom and in their place, company-wide layoffs have become ubiquitous. That paired with stagnant pay while inflation skyrockets leaves little question as to why the younger generations are changing how they work, like in the case of “quiet quitting”.

I spoke with a new pediatrician working at a rural health center who said her staff were “quiet quitting”.

She is the only pediatrician on staff and does a lot of admin work herself which is outside of her scope, but her perspective is, you do whatever you can for the sake of the patient. She has come to be directly at odds with staff who she feels aren’t doing their part.

She was surprised and confounded to hear from staff that a certain task wasn’t within their job description so they weren’t going to do it. From her perspective, she is a doctor who cares deeply for her patients working at a place with funding and staffing constraints, but she is doing her best and doesn’t understand why everyone else isn’t either. To her, it is a matter of doing what is best for the patient and putting the patient first.

On the other side is her staff who, based on generalized Gen Z sentiments, likely feel the people in charge of the center are choosing to operate under funding and staffing constraints in order to make as much of a profit as possible. The expectation being that instead of taking a pay cut, business owners offload the burden onto staff. This is the same argument against tipping.

Everyone has a point. No one has a solution.

Staffing issues are further strained by high turnover rates due to burnout among other cultural shifts in the workplace. In September 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, “The median tenure of workers ages 55 to 64 (9.6 years) was more than three times that of workers ages 25 to 34 (2.7 years).”

Burnout is increasingly a reality for many workers. This is partly because working a full time job these days does not mean you are living comfortably.

One argument, that maybe doesn’t fit seamlessly here but that I’ll be damned to omit, is the increase in women going to college and having careers compared to decades ago. Previously, the majority of male workers could work overtime and put the company first because someone was at home doing all the cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children.

The fact is, for numerous socioeconomic reasons, the reality of daily life and work look vastly different for the youth of today compared to decades ago and we’re seeing that in how they show up in the workplace.

Every generation thinks they had it harder than the generation after theirs.

Millennials have been endlessly razzed, called every insult in the book, and have been the scapegoat for many a failing industry from diamonds to avocados. But the economic ecosystem younger generations are facing is hard to pillory. Yet, we continue to demand the status quo from them. We may have voted for Bernie Sanders, but we quietly whisper to our colleagues our concerns that the younger staff just aren’t measuring up. We evangelize the benefits of working your way up the ladder to a generation working multiple jobs or living with their parents to pay off debt or save up for rent.

If we continue down this trajectory, what does the future of work look like?

• Maybe we will have less experienced and skillful workers. Yes, but jobs are still in high demand so this will correct itself.

• Maybe only people willing to sacrifice their own well-being for the betterment of another become medical professionals. Yes, but AI will expand into healthcare so there won’t be gaps in the workforce.

• Maybe young people are simply unable to find jobs due to lacking the higher education required and AI having eliminated too many entry level positions. Yes, but finding stable employment has always been tough, this won’t impact the future of work that much.

This future may be hard to imagine, but luckily, or unluckily, we don’t have to travel far to see it in real time.

I recently read a Substack article that compared the current state of Japan to what the U.S. could face in late-stage capitalism. Japan is well into this future, but it all started right where young people in the U.S. find themselves today.

In 1994, Japan’s economic bubble popped and a recession that was expected to stabilize, ended up staying firm for decades. Businesses shuttered or had hiring freezes. Young people were unable to find jobs at the pivotal start of their careers. Many never became financially stable and didn’t start a family. Others continued living with their parents, a phenomenon we’re seeing in younger generations today.

The conditions aren’t identical, but the results are eerily similar. The U.S. has been in a recession which has caused younger generations to struggle to afford college and basic necessities like housing. Some who attained higher education are compelled to take lower paying jobs in order to start paying back loans as soon as possible. Higher prices on necessities, the rising cost of healthcare, stagnant wages, seemingly unavoidable debt, fused with a reduction in entry level positions due to technological advancements results in a generation of young people struggling to become financially stable and forgoing starting a family.

Both these generations, young adults in 1994 Japan and 2026 U.S., stared down the barrel of a fraught future, quickly snuffing out any motivation or hope they might have had, at times literally. Japan’s Lost Generation experienced significantly elevated suicide rates. Suicide rates in the U.S. have steadily increased over time with sharper increases being seen among young adults.

Japan is marching steadily toward demographic collapse. A young generation, due to socioeconomic pressures, opted out of having children, leading to a future with a smaller working-age population, which will eventually tank economic productivity. Japan has been futilely trying to turn course by offering every fertility incentive it can imagine to no avail.

Comparatively, the U.S. is trying to call everyone’s bluff.

“If you can’t handle the work, then quit, we have AI that can replace you.”

“If you want to have a successful career as a woman, then don’t have kids.”

We tell younger generations, this is how it is and you need to get with the program or else. Well the “or else” was meant as a threat to the youth but has turned into a very real threat to the future of the U.S. economy.

In 1994, Japan’s birth rate was at 10 per thousands after steadily decreasing since the 70s. The U.S. hasn’t hit those numbers yet, but we're not too far off and have similarly seen birth rates decline for decades. Despite its efforts to incentivize fertility, Japan hasn’t seemed to connect the dots between work/life balance and the desire to have babies. Japan’s infamous, tough working conditions create the exact hostile breeding ground they are trying so hard to rid themselves of.

As the population ages without the safety net of a younger generation to support them, Japan will see marked shifts in the workplace. For example, they might find the local 7/11s or the service industry at large staffed entirely with octogenarians. (If you’ve ever had to be in-house IT for a grandparent, you can imagine the implications of this.) Closed down schools and daycares will turn into senior care centers or specialized nursing facilities. Ghost towns will appear when houses go uninhabited, dragging down property values, and straining regional infrastructure. There will be an increase in demand for advanced technology like autonomous vehicles and AI in medical care to fill the critical labor void. Unfortunately, the need will be so great that matching the quality of care of real people won’t be a priority, something we’re all already experiencing against our will.

It’s becoming alarmingly clear that when it comes to the future of work, the youth may be holding all the cards. Despite the concerns of the lone pediatrician or the seasoned attorney just trying to do what they think is best for their patient or client, the youth are standing firm saying, “We don’t like this and we’re not doing it.”

If the declining birth rate is our peek into a crystal ball to see the future of work, the prediction is clear. Change the workplace for young professionals now or we will be forced to change the workplace for everyone, less favorably, and under more dire conditions later.