Discussion
US Job Market Visualizer GitHub
nipponese: Cool site and Andrej is the man. But the BLS data...> Taxi Drivers, Shuttle Drivers, and Chauffeurs> Overall employment of taxi drivers, shuttle drivers, and chauffeurs is projected to grow 9 percent from 2024 to 2034, much faster than the average for all occupations....word?
observationist: It's kinda cool to see a whole lot of otherwise intelligent people who are so dogmatically and ideologically opposed to anything AI that they're going to willfully dismiss anything that AI produces regardless of utility.It's not great for them, but it's a definite advantage for people who are already in the mindset of distinguishing and discriminating information and sources on merit, instead of running an "AI bad" rubric as part of their filter.AI has already won. It's taking over. It might be a year or two, or five, or ten, but AI isn't slowing down, nobody is going to pause, and there's a whole shit ton of work people do that won't be meaningful or economically relevant in the very near term. Jevons paradox isn't relevant to cognitive surplus - you need a very different model to capture what's going to happen.It's time to surf or drown, because it doesn't look like any of the people in charge have the slightest clue about how to handle what's coming.
toomuchtodo: It is free for you to say this, because if you're wrong, there will be no consequences. Words are cheap. No different than various CEOs saying "AI will replace these workers" and now having to hire back those they laid off. Klarna, Salesforce, etc. Will be a great comment to reference in the future to capture the exuberance of the times.Companies Are Laying Off Workers Because of AI’s Potential—Not Its Performance - https://hbr.org/2026/01/companies-are-laying-off-workers-bec... - February 2nd, 2026
tencentshill: This is an AI slop website the same as spammed on Show HN. Doesn't matter if the author is incredibly wealthy.
throwaw12: The VIEW could be AI slop, but underlying CONTENT has some meaning.There is definitely impact on Software engineering jobs at the moment, interns/juniors are struggling to find jobs, companies are squeezing every bit of dev slack time to produce more stuff with AI.
nerevarthelame: > The VIEW could be AI slop, but underlying CONTENT has some meaning. There is definitely impact on Software engineering jobs at the moment, interns/juniors are struggling to find jobsIs that notion supported by this content? The BLS Outlook for most software engineering jobs is most in the "much faster than average" growth range.
throwaw12: BLS outlook is based on historical trends and inertia, both could be true at the same time:* Yes software engineering jobs can grow - by increasing demand for custom software thanks to coding agents unlock* AI can impact it - by making software engineers LLM code approvers
bigyikes: Does it matter if the author is a renowned expert in the field?
faangguyindia: Show HN isn't about being expert.
bcrosby95: If what you state comes to pass there will be no "surfing" when it comes to cognitive work.
ertgbnm: shhh just surf that deadly tsunami bro
blululu: A surfboard is no use in a tsunami. You will drown. The author will drown. Do not celebrate the tsunami.
ApolloFortyNine: The raw anti Ai hate for anything that even mentions it makes me think of the early days of the internet where it was considered just a fad.
nsvd2: Interestingly, it seems from these statistics the median wage for individuals with a Master's is lower than a Bachelor's. I wonder if that's because of immigrants who pursue higher education for visa reasons skewing the data.
lotsofpulp: Other possible reason could be many or most Masters degrees not conferring additional pricing power.
visarga: If AI produces surplus where does it go? Not talking about investment backed datacenter buildout and AI labs. Talking about the results of AI work...I think AI outcomes distribute to contexts where it is used, and produce a change in how we work, what work we take on. Competition takes care of taking those surpluses and investing them in new structure, which becomes load bearing and we can't do without it anymore.In the end it looks like we are treading water, just like it was when computers got 1M times faster in a couple of decades, but we felt very little improvement in earnings or reduction in work.Surplus becomes structure and the changed structure is something you can't function without. Like the cell and mitochondrion, after they merged they can't be apart, can't pay their costs individually anymore. Surplus is absorbed into the baseline cost.
ripvanwinkle: The surplus goes to the owners of the capital. Labor has been losing to capital for sometime now
orphea: No. You can be an expert in one field, and have no idea what you're doing in another.
georgemcbay: > You can be an expert in one field, and have no idea what you're doing in another.And for whatever reason a lot of people in startup/tech seem to have a huge Dunning-Kruger effect blind spot where they believe knowing a lot about one thing makes them an expert in everything.This used to just be funny, but when it started to intersect with politics it began to actively contribute to destroying society. It isn't funny anymore.(I don't think Karpathy's job data here is destroying society, this is a more generalized observation).
thejazzman: It is wild that ya'll are hating on a website that visualizes data. That's like table stakes standard common practice for software engineers for decades.This is the equivalence of telling a Designer that can't create infographics on anything but principled design subjects -- or else they're out of line. Any research or data they might use isn't relevant because they're not exerts? lol?
ncr100: Nifty!Needs- [utility] add filter by keyword / substring match, e.g majority of visualized reports are un-labeled requiring hovering with a mouse pointer- [improve discovery] add sort by demographic / pop impact, e.g largest block is 7m ('Hand laborers and movers') and default sorted to bottom-left
vvoyer: I wish there would be a color blind friendly version of this. I have deuteranopia and can’t distinguish red from green in the page.
morley: Out of curiosity, what colors (or text treatments) do you personally prefer to confer "gain" and "loss"?
coldcity_again: >Software Developers +15%Yay!>Computer Programmers: -6%Oh no
bilbo0s: I don't know?They're saying that programmers will be declining. While Developers, and crucially, Testers and QA people will be increasing. That testers and QA become more important in the future sounds plausible to me in a future hypothetical world of ubiquitous AI.
dwroberts: > AI has already won. It's taking over. It might be a year or two, or five, or ten, but AI isn't slowing down, nobody is going to pause, and there's a whole shit ton of work people do that won't be meaningful or economically relevant in the very near termMaybe it was linked from a comment somewhere on HN but just today I saw a post saying “Microwaves are the future of all food: if you don’t think so, you better get out of the kitchen”Microwaves have already won. There will be a microwave in every home over the next few years.It’s time to start microwave cooking or drown
KellyCriterion: :-D(actually, I own one but I havent used it for 10+ years)
alexfromapex: It looks like this is using 2024 data so quite old?
anonymous_user9: The problem is that the data it's visualizing is fake. The color grading is just an AI guessing how susceptible jobs are.
post-it: Anecdotally, many people get a bachelor's degree to check a box for job applications, whereas many people get a master's degree because they love the field and/or are afraid to leave school.My friends and I who have a bachelor's degree in CS make more money than my friends who have or are working towards master's degrees in CS, because the former are working in the private sector and the latter are in academia making peanuts.
patcon: Amen. Well saidOP comment is not clever
sublinear: I enjoy that this visualization directly contradicts the mainstream narrative that white collar work is being replaced by blue collar work.
emp17344: Wishful thinking. AI is useful, but it’s far more niche than militantly pro-AI people like you want to believe. It’s a useful tool, nothing more.
faangguyindia: Meanwhile my show HN didn't even get single upvote or any comment. Sigh...
KellyCriterion: Maybe you forgot AI, or blockchain or DeFi or all of these three? :-D /s
zer00eyz: > definite advantage for people who are already in the mindset of distinguishing and discriminating information and sources on meritThis cuts both ways...> there's a whole shit ton of work people do that won't be meaningful or economically relevant in the very near termWhat work do you think AI is going to replace? There are whole categories of people who are going to drown in the hubris of "AI being able to do the job" when it cant.The moment one stops pretending that its going to be AI, that were getting AGI and views it as another tool the perspective changes. Strip away the hype and there is a LOT there... The walls of the garden are gonna get ripped down (Agents force the web open, and create security issues). They end lots of dark patterns, you cant make your crappy service hard to cancel... because an agent is more persistent to that. One size fits all software is going to face a reckoning (how many things are jammed into sales force sideways... that dont have to be). These things are existential threats to how our industry is TODAY, and no one seems to be talking about the impact to existing business models when the overhead of building software gets cut in half (and how it leads to more software not less).
KellyCriterion: THIS: > And for whatever reason a lot of people in startup/tech seem to have a huge Dunning-Kruger effect blind spot where they believe knowing a lot about one thing makes them an expert in everything. <Its especially(!) very common for people who made an exit and are now "wealthy" - sure they can afford to have an oppinion on everything, but very often they are just talking bullshit, thinking: "hey, I made it in field X, so why do not try field Y".Esp the "MBA crowd" is famous for this: For whatever reason they think they are more intelligent than ana engineer who filed a patent, e.g. (while most of the MBA bobos would fail just in acquiring all documents required for this)Other example: If you wrote once a book and it got traction, even if you are not a proven expert you will be invited to television shows etc. (and MORE than the people who are real experts with proven track record)
tw04: >It's kinda cool to see a whole lot of otherwise intelligent people who are so dogmatically and ideologically opposed to anything AI that they're going to willfully dismiss anything that AI produces regardless of utility.You'd probably put me into that bucket, although I'd disagree. I'm not at all against using AI to do something like: type up a high level summary of a product featureset for an executive that doesn't require deep technical accuracy.What I AM against is: "summarize these million datapoints and into an output I can consume".Why? Because the number of times I've already witnessed in the last year: someone using AI to build out their QBR deck or financial forecast, only to find out the AI completely hallucinated the numbers - makes my brain break. If I can't trust it to build an accurate graph of hard numbers without literally double checking all of its work, why would I bother in the first place?In the same way, if you tell me you've got this amazing dataset that AI has built for you, my first thought is: I trust that about as much as the Iraqi Information Minister, because I've seen first hand the garbage output from supposedly the best AI platforms in the world.*And to be clear: I absolutely think businesses across the board are replacing people with AI, and they can do so. And I also think it'll take 18+ months for someone to start asking questions only for them to figure out they've been directing the future of their company on garbage numbers that don't reflect reality.
jeffbee: I'll tell you what AI apparently can't replace and that is information graphics designers who are familiar with the exotic detail known as "contrast".
paxys: > You are an expert analyst evaluating how exposed different occupations are to AI. You will be given a detailed description of an occupation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.> Rate the occupation's overall AI Exposure on a scale from 0 to 10.The sad part isn't that this is low-effort AI slop, but that intelligent people and policy makers are going to see it and probably make important decisions impacting themselves and others based on these numbers.
jeffbee: This is 99.44% slop! You are completely correct. The "exposure" is based entirely on vibes and does not correspond to observable reality. Down here in the real world the very first sector that is being disrupted is manual farm labor. They are out here with machine vision and quadcopters picking fruit. But according to the prompt that produces the treemap, manual labor has an exposure rank of zero.
ks2048: Bet on high job-growth market: Security guard for data centers.Stand in front with a gun while mobs come to burn down the data center that took their jobs.(I think I'm half joking).
gtr: I know it's not the point of the comment but it's a bit of a flawed analogy. Microwaves have wone to a large extent, such that people without them are a bit of an oddity, and cooking with an oven is more of a special occasion thing than the default cooking method that it was before.
bee_rider: Most houses still have ovens. Microwaves are pretty widespread as well. But, their main job is to warm up food which was cooked in an oven (either locally or at a centralized oven in a food manufacturing factory). Microwave and ovens are mostly complementary tools.Although, the analogy seems sort of useless, in that the food preparation ecosystem is really not any less complex than the program creation ecosystem, so it doesn’t offer any simplification.
j3k3: "AI has already won. It's taking over. "Man.. I suggest you touch some grass. You are living in a bubble.
ctoth: Maybe you could have an AI explain to you how bad this analogy is.
dwroberts: It’s a great analogy because it is something that is everywhere, that everyone does use from time to time, but the idea that it magically displaces everything forever (with no downsides) is naively optimistic(The original phrase was not just made up, it was sourced from actual news articles and marketing about microwave ovens, that’s why it feels relevant to a hype cycle like this)You also see this kind of naive optimism if you go look at illustrations from the early 1900s. People believed everything would eventually be a machine: that a machine would feed you, wake you up in the morning, physically move everything within your home etc. And yeah those things are possible to do, but in reality they aren’t practical and we do not actually use machines to do everything because it has costs
ctoth: So, you know how people talk about AIs as dumb pattern matchers?So, you know how looking at one pattern and then just saying "this one will be like that one?" without considering the similarities and differences is similar to what people complain about AIs doing?Consider: Unlike my Microwave, Claude can work on Claude. Unlike my Microwave, Claude gets better at more things. Unlike my microwave, we do not know what causes Claude to work so well. My Microwave cannot improve the process that makes my microwave.Also, um.I'm not sure if you noticed?But machines are everywhere.I'm typing on one while another one (a microwave, in fact!) heats my breakfast, while another one washes my clothes, while another one vacuums my floor, while another one purifies the air in my room, while another one heats the air in my room, while another one monitors my doors and windows for unauthorized entry and another one keeps my food cool and another one pumps the Radon gas out of my basement and another one scoops my cat's poop.
ProfessorLayton: It's not about preference, but about being able to see the differences in the first place, so any sufficiently contrast combination should work.If you turn on the color filters in accessibility settings in macOS you can see what the contrast could look like to a colorblind person.
jvanderbot: My takeaway here: 3.XT $ of US salaries are the TAM for AI companies.Apple, a very successful company, makes 300B/y revenue? (ish)~10% is all you need to be Apple.And, it can work by taking all of 10% of the jobs and collecting the whole salary (the AI employee -- dubious proposition),or by taking 10% of everyone's salary and automating part of everyone's job (the AI "tool" -- much more plausible).If "part" being automated is >10%, we all win in the long run, every company gets productivity growth without cost growth, etc etc.If you add in data center costs, and multiple competing AI companies, and then expand the TAM to all white collar work worldwide, you can make everyone successful beyond their wildest dreams with a "20% of work for 20% of the cost" model. Again, how you distribute that 20% remains to be seen (20% new unemployment, or new 0% unemployment with "tools".I formalized my thoughts here: https://jodavaho.io/posts/ai-jobpocolypse.html
gruez: A better analogy might be computers, self-driving cars, or humanoid robots, since unlike microwaves, they can actually improve. Meanwhile microwaves were more or less the same since their invention.
archagon: They cannot improve; humans can improve them. To what extent can they improve them? No one really knows.
Volker-E: "everywhere" – look twice.
cman1444: Insights from a real estate perspective: Most of the jobs that have the highest AI exposure are office jobs. Clerks, assistants, secretaries, software developers, bookkeepers, customer service, lawyers, etc. There has been a narrative the past couple years that office real estate was recovering as companies returned to office. If AI job losses materialize, it looks like there may be a second hit to that sector.
ks2048: Does the LLM understand or consider "rent seeking"? Lot's of high-paying jobs and entire industries seem to be propped-up by those same people who already have the power.
mjr00: > cooking with an oven is more of a special occasion thing than the default cooking method that it was before.This is an incredible self-report. If you consider microwaved meals to be your default method of cooking and not something primarily for reheating leftovers or defrosting frozen meat, I sincerely hope you've gotten your cholesterol and blood pressure checked recently. That is not normal.
baggachipz: Not to mention the amount of plastic they're adding to their body and the amount of trash they're creating. I know cooking for one can be arduous, but meal prep is a thing.
wrs: [delayed]
jazzpush2: This is a surprisingly bad treemap, which is surprising given how easy it is to build a good one these days.
jjtheblunt: "TAM" = ?
istjohn: Total addressable market
Traster: I think a lot of the pushback comes down to your attitude. The way you're talking about AI is like how the crypto bros talked about bitcoin. Just being very insistent on your point of view is a red flag. Either you can present new data to convince people, or your insistence will just look like it's emotional rather than rational.I use AI every day as part of my work, it's very unclear to me where it's going and we have no idea if we're on an exponent or S-curve. Now, normally people talk with conviction because they have more data. But one of the breakthroughs of crypto was this social convention of just have very strong opinions based on nothing. A lot of that culture has come over to AI.Your comment typifies this, it's all about I need to get on board, AI has already won, you've got an advantage over me because you realise this.Go back, look at the actual article you're commenting on. Did the AI analysis of job exposure provide anything of value. I'm not totally convinced it did, and you didn't even think about it. What critical thinking did you do about the data that came out of this dashboard.
gzread: When I had neither I found it convenient to buy a small oven - the size of a microwave. It performs both functions. It doesn't reheat things as quickly as a microwave.I've lived without a microwave for a long time and it's only a little bit inconvenient because things take longer to reheat.
blululu: I don’t doubt the intelligence of the OP though I question their wisdom and I doubt they know how to surf. They are more or less correct in their assessment of the current state of things and where things are heading, but this would entail a significant existential risk. Having an natural aversion to our own destruction is probably a sensible approach going forward.
j3k3: "cooking with an oven is more of a special occasion thing"this is nuts! I use an oven every day dude - so its a special occasion is it?The default method for cooking is using an oven or using a stove. Microwaving is for heating up left-overs for the most part.One of the dangers of people who are too close to programming is that they think of life as binary.
treyfitty: Data is coming from BLS. Their data lags the true state of affairs, and their growth projections are never reliable. Remember when they touted from 2000-2010 that Actuaries are the hottest growing field with the best forward looking outlook?BLS forward looking guidance means nothing when technology revolutionizes the nature of work.
just_once: It wasn't even that long ago that Trump fired the BLS Commissioner and nominated someone that would "restore GREATNESS" to the BLS.Putting aside the slop facade place atop the data....why would we trust the data?
gwbas1c: > and cooking with an oven is more of a special occasion thing than the default cooking method that it was before.That really only makes sense if for households with a toaster oven, single adults, childless couples, and retired people. A toaster oven makes a lot more sense for small meals, in part because it can heat up much faster than a full oven.Otherwise, a daily family meal isn't a special occasion.
nlawalker: Re: kitchen appliance analogies, I stand by my "AI is a dishwasher" analogy.It's annoying that the dishes still have some pooled water in them when the cycle finishes; it doesn't always get everything perfectly clean; I have to know not to put the knives or the wooden stuff or anything fancy in it. But in spite of all of that, I use it every day, it's a huge productivity boost, and I'd hate to be without it.
ap99: I get where you're coming from but dishwasher is definitely a "could live just fine without."Fridge OTOH, not so much.
bwhiting2356: Are childcare and kindergarten teachers really exposed to AI? In theory, we could put a class of 30 children in front of chatbots with one supervisor. But I doubt we would chose to do this as a society. If office work becomes more automated, early childhood education is actually one area I'd expect to take up the Slack. I can't imagine a situation where we have millions of unemployed former office workers but we leave them idle and let our children waste away in front of screens.
BlusterG: In which theory? And if you can do anything in theory, then there is no justifiable "but" or any excuse. The only problem is your own ability to realize it or unexpected situation. A theory is a fact, a proven hypothesis, with all its parts such as formulas, laws, or a force as in the THEORY of gravitation. And no, you don't have one, and I assure you that you've never had a theory in your life.
gzread: And other people choose to wash dishes by hand and they're fine with it and not significantly less productive. The use of a dishwasher wasn't forced on everyone.
ericmay: It's actually less productive for dishwasher-safe dishes, there's simply no question about that.Hand-washing dishes also, from what I understand, uses more energy and water than the dishwasher does.
cj: I haven't used my oven since buying a counter top air fryer (and a sous vide) a couple years ago. I can't think of a single reason why anyone needs a full size oven on a daily basis unless you're cooking for a large family.
gzread: This is a great analogy, because just like AI, microwaves are good for quick fixes, tasks where you don't really care about the quality and would rather minimise the effort.
bcrosby95: In the early days of the internet, there were roughly 3 categories of views I remember:1. Brick and mortar is dead.2. The internet will die.3. What is the business model? (this one still seems to exist to this day to some extent, lol)Reality fell between 1 and 2.
doom2: If dead Internet theory is coming or is already here, then reality is 1 and 2
BlusterG: There is no such a theory. Not even a hypothesis.
mjr00: Sure, but we were talking about using microwaves as your primary cooking appliance.
beanjuiceII: how is it a great analogy? do microwaves improve as fast as AI has been?
j3k3: But a microwave does exactly what it says on the tin, every time, without fail.LLMs require a lot more effort.
adolph: > In the end it looks like we are treading water, just like it was when computers got 1M times faster in a couple of decades, but we felt very little improvement in earnings or reduction in work.I think this is a very important point. The hedonic treadmill means real gains are discounted. The novelty information cycle is like an Osborn Effect for improvements, like the semi-annual Popular Mechanic's flying car covers where there is an enticing future perpetually nearly here and at the same time disappointingly never materialized.
NiloCK: I've worked in dish pit.I can tell you that I didn't observe a single hand-wash-only holdout.Perhaps such holdouts existed at a point, but a restaurant can only flatter the ego of their performatively-unproductive seniors for so long. Competition exists.
beanjuiceII: i wonder what people in restaurants use and why
