AI will transform your job: your value won't
McKinsey estimates that by 2035 automation will absorb the equivalent of 36 million jobs in the U.S.
In an article in Xataka México, a paradox is raised: AI will transform your job, but it won't necessarily eliminate it. The outlet recalls the panic of accountants in the 1980s, when the spreadsheet replaced hand calculations.
Now think of someone who is 18 and still hasn't decided what to study. The paradox hits differently: they don't fear losing a job they don't have, they fear choosing wrong. What if the career they choose stops existing before their first promotion?
The task changes; the person is not a task
The central data point is from McKinsey, cited by Xataka México: by 2035 automation will absorb demand equivalent to 36 million full-time jobs in the U.S. alone. That's not 36 million layoffs, but hours that will no longer be indispensable. About 25 million of those positions will continue to exist with different tasks, and the remaining 11 million will indeed require complete retraining: nearly 6.5% of the U.S. workforce. The 2025 World Economic Forum study, also cited by Xataka México, calculates something similar globally: about 92 million jobs relocated to roles that demand new skills.
«Your value doesn't depend on whether the market can relocate you; it depends on who made you.»
McKinsey sums it up this way: "the challenge of the next decade is (job) mobility, not scarcity." Therein lies the article's insight: the task is reshaped, the person remains. The blind spot appears in that very word: mobility.
"Mobility" is not the same as vocation
For McKinsey, the unit of measurement is the position, not the person. The economy sees capacity that can be relocated; Scripture sees someone made in the image of God: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:27, ESV). Your value doesn't depend on whether the market can relocate you; it depends on who made you.
Work, moreover, is service and stewardship before it is salary. Paul wrote to slaves and masters: "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men" (Colossians 3:23, ESV). A trade can disappear; the vocation to serve with what you do cannot.
The article also shows who pays the bill. It classifies transitions into three routes: direct, indirect, and one unpaved, the steepest. Only one in seven workers would have a direct path. 41% would go the indirect route and 45% the hardest one, often with a lower starting salary. More than 75% of those who must change occupations come from administration, retail, and logistics or transportation. The risk of reinventing yourself is 7.6 times greater for low earners than for high earners, and among the lowest salaries only 10% have a direct route, compared to nearly 40% among the highest. That bill ends up being paid by the worker, with time, certificates, and salary; there is a question of justice there that I don't want to overlook.
There's a data point that hits those your age directly. In programming, job openings rose about 15% since February 2025, while overall hiring fell 7%. But 71% of that rebound is senior positions: juniors, precisely those who trained recent graduates, are the ones being cut the most. AI doesn't take away your future; it takes away the step to learn it.
Learn a tool, not a speech
Choose a repetitive task you already do—summarizing notes, balancing a spreadsheet, answering emails—and learn to solve it with an AI assistant until you can explain how you did it. It's not about collecting apps. The goal is to free up time for what truly requires your judgment, your dealings with people, and your ability to decide.
I won't promise you that your first job will be your dream job or that AI will leave you untouched. But I do believe that whoever learns to serve with judgment and works for the Lord has somewhere to stand when the map changes. Which of your repetitive tasks are you going to stop doing by hand this week?
