Analyzing 5 Million Freelance Jobs: Which Jobs Are Most Likely to Be Replaced by AI? 128

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence will affect employment. But which jobs are more likely to be replaced by AI, and which jobs are currently being replaced? Rather than guessing like others, I decided to look at the cold hard data: actual freelance jobs on Upwork from November 1, 2022 (one month before ChatGPT's release) to February 14, 2024, to see which jobs were affected the most, which AI skills saw the largest increase in job postings?and which jobs saw the largest decline in numbers?

I selected the 12 most popular job categories on Upwork and analyzed the 84-day moving average (approximately 3 months) of job counts in each category. To my surprise, since the release of ChatGPT, the number of jobs in most categories actually increased, but jobs in 3 categories dropped significantly.

Which jobs saw the largest decline in numbers?

The 3 categories with the largest decline were writing, translation, and customer service jobs.

• Writing jobs dropped by 33%,

• Translation jobs dropped by 19%,

• Customer service jobs dropped by 16%.

• Which job categories were affected the least?

Apart from these 3-4 job categories, most other job categories were not negatively affected; in fact, the number of jobs actually increased. Since ChatGPT was released.

Which AI skills saw the largest increase in job postings?

• Video editing/production jobs grew by 39%,

• Graphic design jobs grew by 8%,

• Web design jobs grew by 10%.

• Software development jobs also increased, with backend development jobs growing by 6% and frontend/web development jobs growing by 4%.

Which job categories saw the largest drop in hourly rates?

As you can see, translation work was by far the hardest hit, with hourly rates falling by more than 20%, followed by video editing/production and market research. Graphic design and web design jobs were the most resilient. Not only did the number of jobs for the two increase, but hourly rates also went up a bit.

Since ChatGPT's release, we have found that writing, customer service, and translation jobs on Upwork have noticeably decreased.

Web design, graphic design, software development, and video production jobs were the most resilient, with no decline in demand (in fact, they increased)

Which AI skills saw the largest increase in job postings?

Okay, we know which jobs are declining in demand, but which jobs are actually increasing in demand because of AI?

My first instinct was that data annotation/labeling jobs should have increased to help train and fine-tune their LLMs, and where better to find people to label data than on freelance platforms? While I didn't expect most companies to hire many machine learning experts on Upwork, machine learning jobs should at least have seen considerable growth, right?

It turns out that both of these assumptions were completely wrong. Although data annotation jobs initially increased, the number of data annotation jobs has been fairly flat over the past 10 months. Since ChatGPT's release, the number of machine learning jobs has actually decreased.

Perhaps companies are hiring more machine learning engineers outside of Upwork. After all, who would trust freelancers to handle important, specialized machine learning work, right? However, even if we look at the world's largest companies, there is still no noticeable growth in demand for machine learning.

On the other hand, jobs like generative AI content, developing AI agents, integrating OpenAI/ChatGPT APIs, and developing AI applications are becoming increasingly popular. But what is the number one use case so far? Chat bots—since the release of ChatGPT and the OpenAI API, the number of jobs related to developing chatbots has surged by 2000%. If there is a killer use case for AI today, it's developing chatbots.

Note: All of the above data is provided by Revealera.com, a data provider that offers company hiring trend data. Upwork's job posting data is also publicly available as an RSS feed, so anyone can easily analyze this data.