The 10 Boston jobs most at risk from AI over the next 5 years

Ask an AI optimist and an AI doomer which jobs the technology will wipe out, and you'll get two very different answers. The honest one: nobody knows exactly. But we have three solid sources of evidence, federal employment projections, studies from Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, MIT and Stanford, and what Boston-area companies are already doing, and they keep pointing at the same kinds of work.

A note on method before the list: the Bureau of Labor Statistics projections below cover 2025 to 2035 nationally and reflect all forces on employment, not AI alone. The occupation-level forecasts and the major studies together are the best available evidence, and this list is our editorial synthesis of them, not a single study's ranking.

1. Data-entry keyers

The BLS projects 25.5% fewer data-entry jobs nationally by 2035, the steepest decline of any major office occupation, and the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report flags data-entry clerks among the fastest-declining roles globally. In Boston, that means document processing at hospitals, universities, insurers and financial firms.

2. Telemarketers

BLS projects a 21.4% decline by 2035. Scripted outbound calling is exactly the kind of repetitive, language-based work AI voice and chat systems handle. Relationship-driven sales is a different story.

3. Payroll and timekeeping clerks

Projected down 15.9% by 2035. Automated payroll software was already eating this job before generative AI arrived; AI accelerates it at large institutions like hospitals and universities.

4. Computer programmers (routine, entry-level coding)

This one surprises people. BLS projects a 7% decline for computer programmers even as it projects software developers to grow 10.2%. The distinction matters: AI writes routine code well, so the narrow "turn specs into code" role shrinks while higher-level design work grows. Stanford researchers found a 13% relative employment decline among workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations, suggesting the squeeze hits entry-level hiring first. For Boston's huge graduate pipeline, that's the warning sign.

5. Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks

BLS projects a 6% decline, and Goldman Sachs's August 2025 analysis flags accounting work as among the most exposed to AI displacement. Routine transaction entry and reconciliations are the vulnerable part, not CPAs.

6. Claims adjusters and examiners

Projected down 6% by 2035. Document-heavy, standardized claims processing is automatable; field inspection and complex negotiation are not. Relevant to Boston's insurance and financial services cluster.

7. Customer-service representatives

BLS projects a 5% decline, and Goldman Sachs explicitly lists customer service among higher-risk occupations. The Klarna saga is the cautionary tale both ways: the company said its AI did the work of 700 agents, then admitted it cut too aggressively and brought humans back for quality reasons.

8. Medical transcriptionists

Projected down 4%, and this is the most direct healthcare angle for Boston's biggest sector. AI speech recognition and automated clinical documentation are collapsing demand for transcription, though that's very different from threatening nurses or doctors.

9. Secretaries and administrative assistants

BLS projects a 2% overall decline, with Goldman Sachs and the WEF both flagging administrative work. The Boston kicker: about half of these workers nationally are in healthcare, education and professional services, the three industries that dominate this city's economy.

10. Paralegals and legal assistants (routine research and document work)

The most debated entry. Goldman Sachs flags legal assistants as higher-risk, but BLS projects essentially flat employment with about 40,800 annual openings nationally. The realistic read for Boston's legal sector: heavy pressure on routine research and document review, and on junior hiring, rather than the occupation vanishing.

Why Boston should pay attention

Greater Boston is unusually exposed to this wave. Office and administrative support makes up 9.8% of metro employment, and business and financial operations 9.0%, well above the national 6.8%. A July 2025 report from the Massachusetts High Technology Council and Boston Consulting Group estimated that about 55% of job skills statewide could face moderate-to-high AI disruption, with adoption concentrated in Greater Boston's largest employers. Note that figure measures disrupted skills, not disappearing jobs.

And it's already showing up locally, mostly as hiring restraint rather than pink slips:

• DraftKings CEO Jason Robins told The Boston Globe in September 2025 that teams must show an AI agent can't do the work before getting approval to hire for it.
• HubSpot cut about 660 jobs in October 2026 while reorganizing around AI, though CEO Yamini Rangan said the move was "not driven by AI-related efficiencies."
• IBM's CEO said AI agents replaced the work of a couple hundred HR employees, while the company hired more programmers and salespeople.

The case against panic

Three reasons to doubt the most dramatic predictions. First, the same projections that show clerical work shrinking show software developers growing 10.2% and computer research scientists growing 21.8% through 2035. Second, MIT research found that only about 23% of wages paid for vision tasks were economically worth automating at current costs; technical capability and profitable adoption are different things, and MIT economist Daron Acemoglu estimates only about 5% of tasks can be profitably done by AI over the next decade. Third, Goldman Sachs's March 2026 update puts broad adoption roughly 10 years out and expects much of the displacement to be temporary, estimating 6 to 7% of the workforce displaced during the transition.

The WEF's employer survey projects 170 million jobs created and 92 million displaced globally by 2030, a net gain. And even shrinking occupations keep hiring: BLS projects roughly 289,500 customer-service openings a year as workers retire or move on.

The most defensible prediction for Boston isn't mass elimination by 2031. It's fewer entry-level hires, reorganized job descriptions, and relentless pressure on routine office work, arriving first in the back offices of the hospitals, universities, law firms and financial companies that employ this city.

Cover image is an AI-generated illustration. Projections and study findings are attributed to their sources as of October 24, 2026. BLS figures are national 2025 to 2035 projections covering all causes of employment change, not AI alone.