--- title: "1 in 3 Workers Say AI Has Them Considering a Different…" canonical: "https://www.metaintro.com/blog/ai-workers-considering-different-industry" language: "en" author: "drashtigarach" published: "2026-09-07T10:29:57.000Z" modified: "2026-09-07T10:29:57.000Z" --- [Back to Blog](/blog) [AI](/blog/tag/ai)[Career](/blog/tag/career)[Job Hunting](/blog/tag/job-hunting)[Labor Market](/blog/tag/labor-market) # 1 in 3 Workers Say AI Has Them Considering a Different Industry A survey of 2,500 knowledge workers found 33 percent are considering changing industries because of AI, rising to 46 percent among C-level executives. [![Drashti Garach](https://cdn.metaintro.com/rs:fill:40:40/q:72/plain/images/5719d740-e510-42bc-8017-e040d145f35f_1766029465094.png)Drashti Garach @DrashtiGarach](/blog/author/drashtigarach) [September 7, 2026](/blog/archive/2026/09)13 min read ![An open plan office where several workstations have been stripped bare](https://cdn.metaintro.com/rs:fill:1200:675/q:78/plain/images/10175-stripped-desks-floor.png) [https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=1%20in%203%20Workers%20Say%20AI%20Has%20Them%20Considering%20a%20Different%20Industry&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-workers-considering-different-industry](https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=1%20in%203%20Workers%20Say%20AI%20Has%20Them%20Considering%20a%20Different%20Industry&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-workers-considering-different-industry)[http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-workers-considering-different-industry](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-workers-considering-different-industry)[https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-workers-considering-different-industry&title=1%20in%203%20Workers%20Say%20AI%20Has%20Them%20Considering%20a%20Different%20Industry](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-workers-considering-different-industry&title=1%20in%203%20Workers%20Say%20AI%20Has%20Them%20Considering%20a%20Different%20Industry)[mailto:?subject=1%20in%203%20Workers%20Say%20AI%20Has%20Them%20Considering%20a%20Different%20Industry&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-workers-considering-different-industry](mailto:?subject=1%20in%203%20Workers%20Say%20AI%20Has%20Them%20Considering%20a%20Different%20Industry&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.metaintro.com%2Fblog%2Fai-workers-considering-different-industry) A third of knowledge workers are thinking about leaving their industry because of artificial intelligence, and the people thinking hardest about it are the ones in charge. That is the headline finding from [The Adaptavist Group](https://www.adaptavist.com/), a digital consulting firm whose new research report was written up by [Fast Company](https://www.fastcompany.com/91602520/workers-are-already-nostalgic-for-the-pre-ai-era) on September 4. At [Metaintro](https://www.metaintro.com), we look closely at survey findings like this one, because sentiment numbers move faster than hiring numbers and they rarely mean what the headline suggests. Here is what the research actually says, what the labour data says alongside it, and what any of it should change about your plans. ## What Did the Survey Actually Find? A workforce that wants more AI and resents what it has become. The study, [Understanding the human cost of AI transformation](https://static.adaptavistassets.com/downloads/adaptavist_human_cost_of_ai_transformation_research_report.pdf), surveyed 2,500 knowledge workers in the UK, the US, Canada, Germany and Spain in March 2026, with fieldwork carried out by the research platform [Attest](https://www.askattest.com/). It is a follow-up to the same firm's 2025 report on digital transformation. The number driving the coverage is that 33 percent of knowledge workers say they are already considering changing industries because of AI. That rises to 46 percent among C-level executives and 36 percent among directors, while mid-level workers sit at 30 percent and senior workers at 27 percent. A separate question found 34 percent have considered retiring earlier than planned, rising to 47 percent among C-level respondents. Underneath that sits a broader mood the authors call pre-AI nostalgia. Almost two-thirds of respondents, 65 percent, said they regularly feel nostalgic about how work operated before AI became widespread. Yet 67 percent said they want their organisation to increase its use of AI, 69 percent said they trust AI is being used ethically where they work, and 66 percent said their employer has been transparent about adoption. Those two sets of numbers are not contradictory once you separate the tool from the rollout. People are not asking for the technology to be taken away. They are describing a specific kind of loss inside a change they broadly support, which is a much more useful signal for anyone deciding what to do next. ## Why Are Gen Z Workers the Most Nostalgic? Because familiarity with technology was never the thing under threat. The most counterintuitive line in the research is that Gen Z workers are the most likely to say they prefer the pre-AI world, at 42 percent, compared with 26 percent of Gen X. These are people who have no professional memory of a workplace without the internet, and they are the group most likely to say something got worse. The report reads this as evidence that the issue is meaning rather than capability. Kevin Nanney, chief people officer at Tempo Software, put it directly in the report, saying that if the people most comfortable with technology still feel something is being lost, leaders need to ask what that something is and whether their rollouts are quietly stripping it out. There is a career-stage explanation worth adding. Early-career work has always been how people build judgment, by doing the routine version of a task enough times to recognise when the output is wrong. When a tool absorbs that layer, the person at the start of a career loses the reps rather than the workload. The 46 percent who told the survey they are frustrated that tasks requiring years of expertise can now be done by almost anyone using AI are describing the same thing from the other end of a career. Both groups are pointing at the disappearance of the apprenticeship built into ordinary work, which is a real structural change and not a mood. ## What Is the Verification Tax and Why Does It Matter to Your Job? It is the hidden work that AI creates rather than removes, and it is now measurable. The report gives it a name and a set of numbers. Forty-two percent of workers say they spend more time verifying AI output than they save by using it. Fifty-two percent say they regularly correct AI-generated work produced by colleagues. Forty-nine percent say poor-quality AI output slows down projects, and 55 percent believe AI-generated content reduces overall team efficiency. This matters for your job in a way the nostalgia findings do not. Verification is a skill, it is currently being done informally and unpaid across whole teams, and it is exactly the capability that survives when the generation step is automated. If you are the person on your team who catches the confidently wrong output, that is not overhead. It is the part of the job that is getting scarcer relative to demand. The report also records a cultural shift it calls human versus machine. Half of respondents, 50 percent, feel their performance is now directly or indirectly compared to AI-generated output. A quarter say they are using AI mainly to meet workload demands and 23 percent say they use it simply to keep up with colleagues. That is adoption driven by pressure rather than by usefulness, and it tends to produce exactly the low-quality output that generates the verification tax in the first place. The loop is self-feeding, and recognising it is more useful than resenting it. If you understand [how to show AI skills on your resume and in interviews](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/how-to-show-ai-skills-on-your-resume-and-in-interviews), the version worth demonstrating is judgment about output rather than fluency with prompts. ## Are Workers Actually Leaving or Just Thinking About It? Thinking about it, and the gap between the two is the most important number in this story. Survey intent and labour market behaviour have diverged sharply, and the official data is unambiguous. The [US Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/) [Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey](https://www.bls.gov/jlt/) put the quits rate at 1.9 percent in July 2026, down from 2 percent in June. For context, that rate peaked at 3 percent in November 2021 during the period widely described as the great resignation, and it ran at about 2.3 percent through 2019, before the pandemic. So a third of knowledge workers say AI has them considering an industry change while the actual rate of people leaving jobs is running below its pre-pandemic normal. Both facts are true. What they describe together is a workforce that is unsettled and staying put, which is what you would expect in a market where [job switchers are still getting the bigger raises](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/job-switchers-7-percent-raises-us-lost-23000-jobs-july-2026) but openings are harder to find. The practical reading is that this is intent under constraint rather than a wave. Considering a change costs nothing. Executing one requires an opening, a salary you can accept and a plausible story about why you are qualified. The survey did capture a smaller and more serious subset, though. Among those considering a career change, 25 percent are actively exploring professions seen as less exposed to AI, and 20 percent are aiming to move within the next two years. That is roughly one in fifteen of the whole sample with a timeline attached, which is a far smaller number than the headline and a far more credible one. ## Do the Trades Really Offer an Escape From AI? The demand is real, the pay is lower than most knowledge workers expect, and the transition is longer than the survey framing implies. The report names skilled trades and manual roles as the destination people are exploring, so it is worth checking that against the projections rather than the vibe. The BLS projects employment of [electricians](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electricians.htm) to grow 9 percent between 2025 and 2035, adding about 75,900 jobs to a base of 821,000, with median pay of $63,190 in May 2025 and a high school diploma as the typical entry requirement. [Heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/installation-maintenance-and-repair/heating-air-conditioning-and-refrigeration-mechanics-and-installers.htm) are projected to grow 11 percent over the same period, adding 48,200 jobs, with median pay of $61,010. Both are growing much faster than the average occupation. Those are genuinely strong outlooks. They are also, for most mid-career knowledge workers, a pay cut during a multi-year apprenticeship before you reach that median. The people for whom this works tend to be the ones who wanted the work anyway and were looking for permission, not the ones running from a chatbot. If the trades appeal, the honest version of the plan starts with the apprenticeship structure and the earning curve rather than with the AI exposure argument, and there is a lot of useful ground covered in [why skilled trades workers have the upper hand in this hiring crunch](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/skilled-trades-workers-hiring-crunch-2026). There is a quieter finding in the same report that points somewhere else. Seventy-four percent of workers said they are actively learning new skills to stay relevant in their field, rising to 85 percent among C-level leaders. Adaptation is running at more than twice the rate of exit intent, and it gets a fraction of the attention. ## Who Is Paying for This Research and Does That Change the Numbers? It should change how you read the recommendations more than how you read the percentages. Adaptavist is a digital consulting group whose business involves helping organisations implement and get value from workplace platforms. The report includes commentary from executives at Tempo Software, [Atlassian](https://www.atlassian.com/), Rewind and [monday.com](https://monday.com/), and it reports that 66 percent of workers say project and work management platforms are becoming more important for organising AI-enabled workflows, with 63 percent saying such platforms help them get the most out of AI. That is a vendor-adjacent finding in a vendor-published report, and you should discount it accordingly. It does not follow that the sentiment data is unreliable. The fieldwork was run by an independent research platform, the sample and dates are disclosed, and the least flattering numbers in the report are the ones about AI creating work rather than saving it, which is not a comfortable message for a firm that sells transformation consulting. The sensible position is to treat the percentages as a reasonable read of how people feel and to treat the prescription as marketing. That distinction applies to most workplace research you will see this year, including the studies your own employer cites back at you. Ask who ran the fieldwork, how many people were surveyed, in which countries and on what date, and whether the recommended fix happens to be the publisher's product. ## What Should You Do With This If You Are Considering a Move? Separate the thing you actually want from the thing you are reacting to. If your honest read is that the work has stopped feeling like yours, that is a real reason to move and it will still be a real reason in a market with more openings. If your read is that AI is coming for the role, the survey suggests you would be joining a large group of people making the same guess about which jobs are safe, and crowded guesses tend to be wrong. A more durable approach is to move toward the parts of your current field that the verification data points at. Judgment, domain depth, the ability to tell when an output is wrong and the authority to say so are all appreciating. Generating first drafts is not. That shift can usually happen inside your current industry, which is cheaper and faster than starting over, and [the skills that keep you employable through constant change](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/2026-career-skills-stay-employable-constant-change) are mostly the ones that transfer. If you do want out, do it on evidence. Look at openings in the target field in your own market, talk to two people already doing the job about what the first three years pay, and write down what would have to be true for the move to be worth it. There is a well-worn route for [career changers who use being an industry outsider as an edge](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/breaking-into-industry-you-dont-know-biggest-advantage-2026), and it works far better than a move made to escape something. The one thing worth doing regardless is the thing 74 percent of respondents said they are already doing. Learning something specific and current is useful whether you stay or go, and it is the only response in this entire report that improves your position under every scenario the research describes. ## Related Articles - [AI Anxiety Is Climbing at Work Even as Productivity Promises Grow](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/ai-anxiety-workplace-2026) - [Skilled Trades Quietly Becoming the Most AI-Proof Careers](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/skilled-trades-ai-proof-careers-2026-salary-apprenticeship-guide) - [Why Corporate Reskilling Programs Are Failing Workers](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/corporate-reskilling-programs-failing-workers-future-proof-career-2026) - [Best Jobs for a Career Change and Why Transferable Skills Matter More](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/best-jobs-for-a-career-change) - [Older Workers Have the AI Upskilling Edge Tech Companies Keep Missing](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/older-workers-ai-upskilling-edge-2026) - [The AI Skills Gap and What It Means for Your Salary](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/ai-skills-gap-and-your-salary) - [When Your Good Job Stops Being Good Enough](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/when-good-job-stops-being-good-enough-career-change-guide-2026) - [Free and Low-Cost Ways to Learn AI Skills That Employers Trust](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/free-and-low-cost-ways-to-learn-ai-skills) - [How Gen Z and Millennial Money Anxiety Is Draining Office Productivity](https://www.metaintro.com/blog/gen-z-millennial-money-anxiety-productivity) ## People Also Asked ### Q: How many workers are considering changing industries because of AI? A: Adaptavist's 2026 research found that 33 percent of the 2,500 knowledge workers it surveyed say they are already considering changing industries because of AI. The figure was highest among C-level executives at 46 percent and directors at 36 percent, and lowest among senior workers at 27 percent. ### Q: Is anyone actually quitting over AI? A: Not at scale so far. The BLS quits rate was 1.9 percent in July 2026, below the roughly 2.3 percent that was normal in 2019 and well below the 3 percent peak of November 2021. Within the survey, 20 percent of those considering a career change said they aim to move within two years, which is a much smaller group than the headline figure. ### Q: What is the verification tax? A: It is the term Adaptavist uses for the work created by checking, correcting and validating AI-generated output. In its survey, 42 percent of workers said they spend more time verifying AI output than they save by using it, and 52 percent said they regularly correct AI-generated work from colleagues. Ready to level up? [Metaintro](https://www.metaintro.com) surfaces roles that match where your skills are heading, not just where they have been. 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