Jennifer Maffei is struggling to keep up with messages from workers who need her help after being “downsized, right sized, restructured”.
The recruiter, who specialises in placing administrative staff, says a growing number have been cut adrift as companies invest in AI. “It’s a mess,” she says. “They’re all from the big companies that have been . . . anticipating that AI is going to be able to do x, y, z for them. In some cases, it will.”
Maffei is witnessing a bigger trend. Clerical and administrative workers — from medical transcriptionists to executive assistants to receptionists — make up the brunt of a group of about 6mn US workers most exposed to AI-driven displacement and least equipped to navigate it, according to think-tank Brookings.