BLS Projects Slowest Decade of Job Growth Since Tracking Began, With Healthcare and AI-Driven Utilities Leading Hiring Through 2035

The federal government just laid out where American jobs are headed for the next decade. The outlook shows slower overall growth, a healthcare hiring wave, and a genuine AI-driven blue-collar boom happening in real time.

The Long View: Slower Growth, Two Industries Doing the Heavy Lifting

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a report released in late August, projects total U.S. employment will rise by 5.9 million jobs to 176.2 million between 2025 and 2035, according to Fortune. That's growth of 3.5%, roughly a third of the 10.9% pace logged the prior decade.

Two sectors are doing almost all the work. Healthcare and social assistance will add 2.2 million jobs, growing 9.5% and accounting for 37% of every new job created through 2035, BLS said. The agency attributes this directly to an aging population and rising rates of chronic disease like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Nurse practitioner jobs are projected to jump 41%; medical and health services managers, 24%.

Utilities will grow fastest by rate, up 9.8%, though the actual job count is small: 58,800 positions. BLS says the growth is almost entirely electric power generation, transmission, and distribution, driven by AI data-center electricity demand. Solar power generation jobs are projected to surge 153%; wind, 62%.

Professional, scientific, and technical services ranks third, up 8.6% and adding 926,700 jobs, the second-highest total of any sector. Data scientist roles are projected to grow 34.6%; computer and information research scientists, 21.8%. That cuts against predictions from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, both of whom warned earlier of an AI-driven "jobs apocalypse" before walking those comments back ahead of their companies' public offerings, Fortune noted.

The losers: office and administrative support jobs are projected to fall 4%, or 752,100 positions, the largest decline of any major occupational group. Sales and related occupations drop 1.4% as e-commerce and AI tools continue displacing retail and clerical work.

What's Actually Happening Right Now Looks Even Better for Blue-Collar Workers

The 10-year forecast is a projection, not a guarantee. The real-time data suggests the AI buildout is already reshaping the labor market faster than BLS's decade-long model captures, particularly for construction and skilled trades.

U.S. construction spending is projected to climb from $2.22 trillion in 2026 to $2.85 trillion by 2031, according to a report from Merlo America and BiltData.ai cited by Fox News. Industrial construction, which includes data centers and factories, is projected to reach $684 billion by 2031, or 24% of all U.S. construction spending. Cole Renken, general manager of Merlo America, told Fox News data-center projects require heavy-equipment operators, electricians, plumbers, and concrete workers at nearly every stage, with electrical trades facing particularly high demand. Brittany Kaiser, CEO of AI infrastructure company Alpha Compute, told Fox News those jobs don't disappear once a facility is built, since data centers require ongoing staff to run and maintain them.

The hard numbers back that up. Manufacturing employment rose 16,000 in August, following gains of 13,000 in June and 14,000 in July, according to Breitbart, citing BLS data. That's 58,000 manufacturing jobs added since bottoming out in December. Construction added another 22,000 jobs in August. Factory orders are up 6.5% this year, including 12.3% for machinery and 14.3% for computers and electronics, and the ISM manufacturing index hit 54.6 in August, its eighth straight month of expansion.

August's overall jobs report, released the first Friday of the month, showed 162,000 jobs added, nearly three times the consensus forecast of 55,000, according to Breitbart. Unemployment held at 4.1% instead of rising to the expected 4.2%. June's job count was revised up from 20,000 to 31,000, and July's initially reported 23,000 job loss was revised to a 21,000 gain.

That July revision matters. The Epoch Times reported on Sept. 1, using preliminary data, that the economy "unexpectedly lost 23,000 positions" in July. Breitbart's later reporting on the August jobs release shows that same July figure was revised upward to a 21,000 gain. Both numbers are accurate for their moment; they describe the same month before and after a government revision, not a contradiction between outlets.

The Real Friction Point

July's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, released Sept. 1, showed openings rose 89,000 to 7.27 million, driven by durable goods manufacturing (+76,000), healthcare (+54,000), and construction (+28,000), the Epoch Times reported, citing BLS. But new hires stayed flat at 5.1 million, and professional and business services hiring actually fell by 188,000. Quits dropped 157,000 to 3.06 million, with the quits rate falling to 1.9% from 2%, a sign workers are staying put rather than jumping to new jobs.

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, speaking at the Jackson Hole conference on Aug. 28, offered one explanation for the sluggish churn: "When labor supply is barely growing, monthly job gains are naturally going to run low," he said, according to the Epoch Times. The Dallas Fed estimates the "breakeven rate" needed to keep unemployment low is close to zero.

A projected loss of 752,100 administrative and clerical jobs over a decade is a real, specific number affecting real people. BLS itself says AI-driven productivity gains are the reason. Whether the healthcare and skilled-trades growth actually absorbs those displaced workers, or whether they end up in lower-wage jobs or out of the labor force entirely, is not something these projections answer.

The next test comes with the September jobs report, due the first Friday of October, which will show whether the manufacturing and construction rebound that showed up in August's revised numbers is a trend or a one-month blip.