Is AI Going to Take Your Job?

There's a book from 1998 called "Who Moved My Cheese?" It features mice navigating a maze when their cheese supply disappears. At 94 pages, it's basically a children's book, and it sold 28 million copies anyway, because it touched something real: change arrives whether you're ready or not, and how you respond is the only part you control.

AI is the cheese being moved right now.

The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report projects that by 2030, 92 million roles will be displaced by AI and automation. That number gets repeated constantly. What gets less attention is that the same report projects 170 million new roles will be created, a net gain of 78 million jobs globally. Neither number tells the whole story, but together they tell a better one than most headlines do.

McKinsey's research puts it plainly: today's AI could theoretically automate about 57 percent of US work hours. That sounds alarming until you read what it actually means. It's not 57 percent of jobs eliminated. It's that a portion of what people do each day could be done differently. Most roles will change shape. Far fewer will vanish.

Real hiring data reflects this. Research tracking job postings from 2019 through early 2025 found postings for routine, repetitive roles dropped 13 percent. Postings requiring analytical, creative, or judgment-intensive work grew 20 percent. AI is changing what employers value, not simply shrinking the headcount.

Here in BC, the picture lines up. Statistics Canada data on why BC businesses are adopting AI shows 51 percent cite increasing task automation without reducing employment as a primary goal. Only 21 percent list replacing employees as a reason at all.

The cheese has moved, but most of it is still in the maze.

IBM's 2026 CEO study found that 41 percent of workforces had already been reskilled to perform their current roles more effectively with AI. The same study found 61 percent of employees say AI makes their work less routine and more strategic. The workers at greatest risk are the ones who decide AI has nothing to do with them.

In "Who Moved My Cheese?", the mice who went looking found new cheese. The ones who waited in the empty room did not. The transition hurts. Moving beats staying put.

If you're a business owner trying to figure out where AI fits into your operation and your team, or an employee wondering how to stay relevant, that's a conversation worth having before someone else decides it for you.