McKinsey’s Workforce Shift Forecast: What SMB Owners Should Plan For
· 6 min read
McKinsey Global Institute estimates major US workforce shifts by 2035. Here is what SMB owners can plan for in hiring, training, and lead handling.
MGI’s 2025 to 2035 modeling points to a mobility problem businesses can plan for
When the workforce shifts quickly, small and mid sized service businesses feel it first, through harder hiring, higher training load, and more time spent just keeping delivery consistent.
On September 29, 2026, McKinsey Global Institute published Workforce in motion: Skills and pathways to future jobs in the United States, warning that the next decade could bring “the largest and most sustained workforce transformation in US history.” The headline number is not simply jobs lost or gained. It is how many people may need to move, retrain, and re qualify fast enough to keep up.
What MGI Actually Estimates For 2025 To 2035
MGI models “how labor demand and occupational transitions could evolve from 2025 to 2035.” In its base estimate, it says automation adoption “could reduce labor demand by 21 percent of current work hours, equivalent to about 36 million jobs.” Over the same “next decade” window, it estimates demand created could exceed demand displaced: “automation could reduce labor demand by the equivalent of roughly 36 million jobs, while growth in the AI value chain and the broader economy could generate demand for more than 40 million jobs.” It also states that “the technology together with broader economic trends could give rise to 41 million jobs in the United States over the next decade.”
For business owners, that mix of displacement and creation matters less than where the strain shows up operationally: reshuffling roles, changing task mixes, and the time it takes for people to transition into new work.
Mobility Is The Near Term Risk
MGI cautions that “counting jobs is an insufficient measure of the impact of new technology.” Job openings can exist while people still struggle to move because roles may require “different skills, credentials, locations, or pay structures.” It then states the central framing plainly: “The next decade’s challenge is mobility, not scarcity.”
This is a practical distinction for service businesses. A market can show demand overall while your specific roles stay hard to fill because the available candidates are coming from different backgrounds, and the job requirements keep shifting under their feet.
How Many Workers May Need To Switch, And What That Implies
MGI estimates that roughly 11 million workers in declining occupations may need to transition to new jobs, with a range “from six million to 16 million depending on the pace of automation adoption and its impact on labor demand.” It also expresses the base estimate as a share: “roughly 11 million US workers, or about 7 percent of current employees, might need to shift between occupations to secure new jobs.”
MGI also breaks down what “transition” means in its base estimate. It says that “for roughly 25 million of these workers, growth in their current occupations could offset the impact of automation, allowing them to stay in the same occupation, although their jobs could change.” Then it draws the line owners should pay attention to: “The remaining 11 million may need to switch occupations entirely.”
A Second Order Effect Many Owners Miss: Titles Can Stay Stable While Work Still Changes
Even without an occupational switch, MGI’s base estimate describes large scale redesign inside existing roles. That shows up as changed task mix: who handles first response, how follow ups get done, what gets documented, and what quality control looks like day to day. In other words, a worker can stay in the “same occupation,” yet the job you hired them for can keep evolving.
For lean teams, this can become a hidden cost center. Constant micro changes to tasks create inconsistent delivery unless you formalize training, documentation, and handoffs.
Credentials, Pathways, And The Training Bottleneck
MGI states: “One in seven workers could have a direct pathway into growing jobs, but almost half may face an unpaved pathway.” It also flags a specific barrier that affects hiring and upskilling speed: “credentials or certifications, which roughly 85 percent of growing jobs require.” MGI defines “Credential” as “a qualification, certification, license, or degree associated with entering or performing an occupation.”
In service businesses, that credential point affects both recruitment and promotion. When growing roles require a credential, skills alone may not be enough to move someone into the seat quickly. Owners can lose months if they discover late that a role change depends on a specific certification pathway.
Reinvention Touches Most Workers
MGI’s estimates go well beyond the workers who may need to switch occupations. It says: “Overall, more than 70 percent of workers could require some level of reinvention because new tasks may require more than 15 percent of their time.” For a business, that points to training workload as a steady operating requirement, not a one time project.
The Skills Signal To Watch
MGI groups skills into three labeled types: “Essential” skills that widen career options, “enabling” skills that unlock higher paying jobs, and “empowering” skills that prepare workers for continuous change. It also makes a specific claim about demand shifts since 2022: “The demand for AI fluency has increased 11 times since 2022, as demand for adaptability has increased fivefold and demand for resilience, curiosity, and willingness to learn has tripled.”
For service business owners, the practical read is that hiring and development will place a higher premium on workers who can adapt their workflow as tools and task mixes change. This affects front line roles and supervisory roles, because supervisors often become the translators who turn new tooling into consistent service delivery.
A Practical Planning Move For Lean Teams
MGI’s framing makes one planning move especially valuable: separate your stable “promise to the customer” from the internal tasks used to deliver it. When tasks shift, the promise stays the anchor, and you can revise re training and quality checks around it.
To turn that into operational work, run a short internal audit across the roles that directly touch lead handling and delivery: identify which tasks are already changing, which ones are blocked by credentials or certifications, and which ones could shift without changing the role title. Then assign an owner for documentation so changes become repeatable, not tribal knowledge.
MGI’s numbers point to a decade where labor demand, credentials, and task redesign move together. The businesses that keep a steady lead flow and consistent delivery will be the ones that treat reinvention as an operating system, not a side project.
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