Poll finds 53% of Americans worry AI will cost jobs

A new national poll shows artificial intelligence is no longer just a Silicon Valley issue or a policy fight in Washington. It has become a household worry, with 53% of Americans saying they fear AI could put them or someone in their home out of work.

The Reuters/Ipsos survey, conducted June 3-8 with 4,531 U.S. adults and a margin of error of 2 points, found that the anxiety cuts across much of the country rather than clustering in a single age group or education level. Thirty-seven percent said they were not worried at all, while 10% were unsure or declined to answer. Even so, the dominant mood was unease, and that unease has grown: 73% of Americans said they are worried about increased use of AI, up from 68% in a 2023 Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The fear is not fully matched by current labor-market conditions. The U.S. economy has posted strong job gains in recent months, suggesting many Americans are reacting less to a present-day employment collapse than to the possibility that AI will change what work looks like next. That gap between perception and data helps explain why the concern feels so personal. It is being measured not just as a broad national trend, but as a threat to paychecks, household bills, and family stability.

The divide is political as well as economic. The poll found 61% of Democrats worried about AI causing job loss in their home, compared with 47% of Republicans. At the same time, 40% of Americans said they use AI regularly, including 50% of college graduates and 34% of people without degrees, showing that familiarity with the tools has not erased anxiety about what they may replace.

The backdrop includes visible job cuts and public backlash. Intuit said last month it would cut about 17% of its workforce, roughly 3,000 jobs worldwide, while sharpening its focus on AI. In May, students at the University of Arizona booed former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt during a commencement speech after he discussed AI’s impact on jobs. Those moments have turned abstract warnings into something more immediate and harder for workers to ignore.

For some people, the shift is already personal. Jennifer Schalhoub, a New Jersey writer, recently lost work writing letters to government officials and suspects AI may have played a role as clients increasingly care less about the quality of the work they get. The poll suggests that kind of anxiety is spreading beyond tech circles into daily life, shaping how Americans think about employers, regulators and the next round of workplace disruption.