AI and Automation Anxiety

3. AI and the New Automation Anxiety

AI is piling onto the economic insecurity that already fuels populist politics - and unlike tariffs, it's a threat with no clear expiration date. In 2025, nearly 55,000 U.S. job cuts were directly attributed to AI, out of 1.17 million total layoffs - the highest since the 2020 pandemic ¹². Major companies explicitly cited AI when eliminating roles: Amazon cut 14,000 corporate positions, Workday cut 8.5% of its workforce ¹². Goldman Sachs found that unemployment among 20-to-30-year-olds in tech-exposed occupations rose by nearly 3 percentage points since early 2025 ¹³. The World Economic Forum projects 85-92 million jobs will be displaced globally by automation by the end of 2026 ¹⁴.

What makes AI a populist issue is where the money goes. AI threatens millions of middle-skill jobs, but the productivity gains flow overwhelmingly to capital owners and executives - widening the very wealth gap that defines the Second Gilded Age. Women are hit harder: 79% of employed women work in jobs at high automation risk, compared to 58% of men ¹⁵. The "junior crisis" is already visible: entry-level positions are being eliminated while C-suite compensation continues to rise.

The political dimension: AI displacement hasn't yet become a dominant campaign issue, but it compounds the economic anxiety underneath everything else. The core question - who benefits from automation, and who bears the cost? - maps directly onto the wealth concentration data tracked in Section 7 below.