Get ready to see a lot more familiar faces at your local Starbucks, because Andrew Yang is dropping some pretty chilling predictions about the future of work. The Forward Party founder and former presidential candidate thinks that AI is about to “kick millions of white-collar workers to the curb in the next 12 – 18 months.”
Yang laid out his thoughts in a recent post on his Substack, painting a picture where companies will enter a fierce competition to cut down their workforce, as reported by Business Insider. He believes that the stock market will actually reward businesses that reduce their headcount and punish those that don’t. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it sounds like a race to automation that could leave a lot of people behind.
So, who exactly is on Yang’s list of vulnerable workers? He’s talking about mid-career office workers, middle managers, call center staff, marketers, and even coders. The list just keeps going. If you’re someone who sits at a desk and stares at a computer for most of the day, Yang has a direct message for you: “Take this very seriously. Millions of workers are about to be given their pink slips.”
The impact of these predicted layoffs won’t stop with the people who lose their jobs, either
Yang points out that if fewer people are going to the office, businesses that support those workers will also suffer. Think about your local dry cleaner, the dog walker, or your hairstylist. If folks are working from home or not working at all, there will be fewer business shirts to launder, more people walking their own dogs, and fewer trips to the salon. It’s a domino effect that could really change how our communities function. Yang sums it up by saying, “The amount of money getting paid to human labor is about to go down.”
We’ve already seen a glimpse of this trend. January saw more layoffs than any January since 2009. While a lot of this has been blamed on general economic uncertainty, some companies are openly citing AI as a reason for their staff reductions. Pinterest, for example, announced in January that it plans to lay off 15% of its workforce, with a spokesperson calling it part of the company’s “AI-forward strategy.”
HP also revealed in November that it would cut up to 6,000 jobs by 2028, directly attributing the cuts to AI initiatives. Of course, some critics are saying that companies are just using AI as a convenient scapegoat for job cuts they might have made anyway.
The tech world itself is pretty divided on how AI will shake things up. On one side, you have big names like Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, who envision a future filled with abundance for everyone, thanks to AI. But then there are others, like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who align more with Yang’s views, saying we should prepare for significant white-collar layoffs.
Yang has been sounding the alarm about automation for a while now. Back in 2018, he told a publication that he foresaw self-driving cars displacing truck drivers, a change he thought could “destabilize society” and even lead to “riots in the street.” His new predictions about AI and white-collar jobs definitely echo that same concern about societal disruption. It looks like we’re in for a wild ride over the next year and a half.
Published: Feb 18, 2026 03:30 pm