AI Anxiety: Workers Lose Confidence in Job Security, Tech-Driven Recruiting Processes

Key Takeaways:

• Despite AI boosting productivity (saving users 1 hour per day on average), job security concerns are at a peak, with 40% of workers worried about their long-term prospects and 13% reporting job loss due to AI in 2024.
• There’s growing skepticism toward AI in recruitment, with trust in AI assessment dropping from 55% to 45% while trust in human recruiters rose to 76%.
• While AI is viewed as career-enhancing by some (51% see more job opportunities), it’s also causing significant workplace stress, with 62% of negatively impacted workers experiencing burnout.

Four in 10 workers are worried about long-term job security, according to the 2024 Global Workforce of the Future report from The Adecco Group. The latest report, which draws from insights of 35,000 workers across the globe, marks the highest reported retention rate in three years — 83% of workers plan to stay with their current employer. 

For many workers, artificial intelligence (AI) has heightened concerns about job stability. More than one in 10 respondents (13%) lost their jobs due to AI this year, while only 8% reported worrying about this possibility last year.  

AI drives productivity for some, strengthens stress for others

AI use at work has proven its benefits — overall, AI users save an average of 1 hour a day, and 5% of users report saving 3 to 4 hours. This frees employees up to spend more time on creative work (28%), improve their work/life balance (27%), and do more strategic thinking (26%). 

In addition, more than half of workers (51%) believe AI skills open up more job opportunities, and 46% credit AI with helping them learn new skills and advance their careers.

But many workers are struggling to adapt to AI use in the world of work: 

• Nearly a quarter of AI users (23%) say it hasn’t eased their workload. 
• Among workers who’ve been negatively impacted by AI, 62% have experienced burnout from work overload. That’s well above the 40% of workers overall who report feeling burnout. 
• Only 46% of employees are confident in decision-makers’ AI skills and knowledge. 

Employers who want to build trust and confidence in AI should consider implementing an ethical usage policy and training employees at all levels on responsible use of AI.

Recruiters become more valuable as workers crave human input

Concerns about AI have led to an increased reliance on human feedback.

The majority of workers (76%) say they value a recruiter’s human expertise to assess their skills and experience, trusting them to see their potential, and this percentage has jumped up from 64% in 2023. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who trust Al to assess their experience has dropped from 55% to 45%. 

Job seekers see AI as potentially harmful to their career prospects. For 23% of workers, AI has made their skills less relevant, and 21% say it has forced them to consider a career change. And they cite several reasons for distrusting AI in the recruitment process, including concerns about:

• AI’s ability to assess positive non-verbal cues in interviews (52%) 
• AI not recognizing them as a promising candidate (38%)
• The technology ignoring skills and/or experience (22%)
• An unfair hiring process if some candidates are using AI (21%)
• What the technology will do with their information (17%)

As AI becomes more prevalent in hiring processes, this lack of trust is driving a desire for a more human-centered recruitment approach. The key moving forward may be finding ways to leverage AI as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, human expertise in recruitment.

Want to keep up with the latest staffing industry news? Sign up for our weekly newsletter!