Using AI More Does Not Reassure Workers, Managers Do

Workers who use artificial intelligence frequently, meaning daily or multiple times a week, are more than twice as likely to fear their jobs will be eliminated within five years as those who use AI only a few times a month or year, according to a recent Gallup study. The findings draw from four waves of nationally representative data collected from employed adults in the U.S. through the Gallup Panel workforce studies between 2023 and early 2026. AI use raises anxiety about job displacement, except among employees exposed to well-structured management practices. The study also finds that greater AI-induced job anxiety is linked to declines in job satisfaction and employee engagement and to higher employee burnout and intent to look for another job.

Frequent AI Use Is Linked to Higher Displacement Fear

Across most survey waves, roughly 3% to 4% of workers say their job is very likely to be eliminated within five years because of new technology, automation or artificial intelligence. The rate has been substantially higher among frequent users. As the graph below shows, workers who use AI daily or multiple times a week reported rates of acute displacement concern more than double those of less frequent users in most waves from 2023 through 2026. The gap reached its widest point in 2024, at 6.7 percentage points.

This pattern runs counter to the idea that increased comfort with AI, from more frequent use, would ease fear about AI-driven job loss. The same tool that speeds up a task can also raise the question of whether the person doing the task is becoming redundant. Workers who rarely touch AI seldom confront this question directly, so they may not worry as much about potential displacement. Frequent users watch AI become part of their daily workflow, and without feedback and engagement from their manager about how that makes them more valuable, they may start to feel expendable.

A 2022 article by Selenko et al. found that AI’s effect on how workers perceive their identity and experience at work depends heavily on whether the technology is deployed to complement existing skills, replace tasks or generate new kinds of work. When AI’s role is ambiguous, it is more likely to undermine workers’ identity or sense of job security. In the absence of clear guidance from the organization, frequent use only heightens uncertainty about job security. Selenko et al.’s research aligns with established historical findings using Gallup data that link technological change to improvements in workers’ self-reported life satisfaction.

To that end, workers in occupations heavily affected by generative AI in the workforce may be more likely to feel at risk of displacement. A 2024 article by Eloundou et al. introduces a measure of occupational exposure to AI that quantifies how many of an occupation’s tasks a generative model can perform at least as well as a human. The Gallup study links this exposure data to workers in these occupations and finds that workers in more AI-exposed jobs are also more likely to fear that their jobs could be displaced by AI. That gap began to widen in the first quarter of 2026.

Workers are responding to a real concern: The higher the share of tasks that generative AI can do in an occupation, the more likely a worker is to fear being displaced within five years. Occupational exposure has some predictive power, but two workers with similar AI exposure may still report different levels of concern. That gap suggests organizational context and manager quality strongly affect how workers interpret the same objective risk.

What Managers Can Do

The study finds that managers shape how workers interpret AI. Employees who feel supported at work are less likely to fear that AI will take their job, and two factors matter most: whether they feel the organization cares about their wellbeing, and whether they feel respected. Employees who strongly agree on either item are about six to seven points less likely to report displacement concern, and both effects hold up after accounting for other workplace factors.

When organizations modernize their AI workforce management and adopt supportive management practices, they can help reduce employees’ fear of AI displacement. Management practices have the greatest effect on frequent AI users, those with the most displacement concern to begin with. For workers giving the highest respect rating, the association between frequent AI use and displacement fear is 6.8 points smaller than for workers giving a lower rating, with an 11.1-point smaller association for those who feel the organization cares about their wellbeing — gaps that hold when tracking the same worker over time. Among infrequent AI users, strong and weak management makes little difference to their fear of being displaced by AI. These results come from studying the same worker’s beliefs about AI job displacement over time. They are also robust to controlling for time trends across industry and occupation.

Given that roughly 19% of all workers, as of the first quarter of 2026, say their job is somewhat or very likely to be eliminated by AI, a 6.8-point swing represents a large share of the total. Better management may not erase workers’ fears about job elimination due to AI, but it can substantially ease those fears and help workers adjust to technological change and modernization.

What Fear Costs the Organization

Displacement fear carries measurable costs for organizational performance. Because the panel surveys the same workers repeatedly, the study can track how a single worker’s outlook shifts over time. Workers who reported that their jobs were at least somewhat likely to be eliminated scored 0.20 standard deviations lower on employee engagement than when they reported no such concern. The same pattern held for burnout (0.18 standard deviations higher), job satisfaction (0.19 standard deviations lower) and job search activity (4.1 points more likely to be actively looking).

To put this in perspective, the associations between AI-induced job anxiety and employee outcomes are comparable to the effects documented in the broader job insecurity literature, where decades of meta-analytic research links perceived employment threat to lower satisfaction, lower commitment, and higher turnover intent across industries and countries. Those estimates, though, are typically measured across different workers, not for the same person over time.

The longitudinal estimates hold up after accounting for stable differences between workers, including personality, baseline optimism and the type of job they hold. The results come from comparing each worker with themselves over time, which rules out spurious factors tied to comparing people across different types of jobs. In short, rising fear about AI correlates with declining engagement and rising turnover intent within the same person over time.

Implications for Leaders

The findings point to several concrete actions for leaders.

• Treat the AI rollout as a communication challenge as much as a technical one. Displacement fear is not driven by occupational exposure alone; it also stems from whether workers get clear, credible information from their organization about what AI means for their role. Managers who explain the purpose of AI adoption, connect it to team capability rather than headcount efficiency, and create space for workers to raise concerns directly reduce the fear that daily AI use can generate.
• Prioritize the workers most exposed to AI daily. The buffering effect of good management is concentrated among frequent AI users, the same workers who are twice as likely to report displacement concern. One-on-one conversations about how AI is changing the work, which skills remain central, and how performance will be evaluated going forward matter more to these workers than to those who rarely encounter the technology.
• Do not assume a uniform message reaches everyone equally. Strong organizational support matters most for workers who have the fewest ways to reassure themselves: those with less seniority, fewer outside credentials and shorter track records to point to. Broad communications about AI strategy are unlikely to reach them. Targeted engagement, whether through direct manager conversations, mentorship, or visible investment in development, yields the highest returns.
• Monitor engagement as a leading indicator. Because displacement fear and engagement move together within the same person, a decline in engagement scores may be an early sign of rising AI anxiety, even when workers do not name it as such. Organizations that track engagement over time have a practical tool for identifying where managerial attention is most needed before turnover intent takes hold.