On 26 January 2026, The Economist (a very well-respected, mainstream publication) published an optimistic article arguing that AI won’t displace white collar jobs. Specifically, the article claimed:

Rather than wipe out office jobs, artificial intelligence will expand their scope and raise their value.

— “Why AI won’t wipe out white-collar jobs” in The Economist (26 Jan 2026)

They followed that up with a podcast on 19 February making the same points. Some of the numbers in that article (and repeated in the podcast), pinged my BS detector. I was particularly sceptical of their claim that “America has … 21% more paralegals than three years ago”, as well as the figures in the below infographic:

So, I decided to look up the data on FRED, which also shows data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics, at an annual frequency. I found three significant problems:

There was no baseline given for comparison
The roles appear to be cherry-picked
Some of the data does not seem reliable

1. No baseline

The first issue is that The Economist had shown job growth rates for certain occupations between 2022-2025, without providing a baseline for comparison. How do we know the growth in these [...]

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Outline:

(01:39) 1. No baseline

(03:41) 2. Cherry-picked data

(05:36) 3. Data does not seem reliable

(06:48) Conclusion

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First published:
February 23rd, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N8HtJC75T33bbKuFX/fact-checking-an-ai-optimist-article-in-the-economist

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Bar graph showing projected U.S. employment change by occupation, H2 2022-H2 2025.

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“Fact-checking an AI optimist article in The Economist” by ToSummarise

LessWrong (30+ Karma)