GDP Surge, Unemployment Among White-Collar Workers: Anthropic Assesses AI’s Impact on the Economy

Anthropic has developed a tool that assesses the potential impact of AI on the U.S. economy by 2030 under three scenarios. In the most radical of these scenarios, the country’s GDP could be 32.4% higher than the level that would be achieved without AI. However, according to the predictive model, such growth would be accompanied by a sharp decline in employment and income for knowledge workers.

Developed by Anthropic in collaboration with economists, including Anton Korinek and Chad Jones, the forecasting model examines the potential impact of artificial intelligence on the U.S. economy through 2030. The tool is still under development and does not yet account for certain important factors, such as business cycles, government responses, potential changes in aggregate demand, and the development of super-powerful humanoid robotics. Nevertheless, using this model, Anthropic, in collaboration with economists, has already been able to assess three possible scenarios for AI’s impact on the U.S. economy through 2030. Going forward, Anthropic explained, the tool will help determine the direction of interventions and policy initiatives that the AI company will fund.

The forecasting tool views each profession as a set of distinct tasks that AI can either automate, supplement, leave unaffected, or use to create new types of activities within a single job, notes Seeking Alpha. Based on this data, the model developed three possible scenarios for how AI will impact the U.S. economy through 2030.

— In a “moderate” scenario, this impact will be comparable to the effect of the advent of the internet, according to Seeking Alpha. According to the report, thanks to the use of AI, by 2030 U.S. GDP will be 1.6% higher than in a scenario without AI and will reach $34.1 trillion. At the same time, unemployment will not deviate significantly from historical ranges.

— The scenario of a “significant” impact of AI on the U.S. economy assumes that by 2030, AI will be able to independently perform about half of the tasks associated with intellectual labor. In this case, U.S. GDP would reach $36.3 trillion, which is 8.3% higher than the hypothetical “baseline” scenario—without AI. Average wages will rise by 2.1% compared to a similar baseline scenario, but this growth will be unevenly distributed. Knowledge workers, for example, will face a 0.3% decline in wages—compared to the “no AI” forecast—while the incomes of workers in other occupations will rise by 5.9%. The overall unemployment rate will be 4.6%. In this scenario, workers’ incomes will account for 56.1% of total GDP, compared to about 60% today. The remaining 43.9% will go to capital owners—in the form of corporate profits, investment income, and other payments to owners.

— In an “extreme” scenario, AI will become more productive than humans in most tasks involving intellectual labor. Its rapid spread will be accompanied by recursive self-improvement of the systems. In this case, GDP growth rates could reach 15% per year, and the economy would double approximately every 4.5 years. Thus, according to Anthropic’s predictive model, by 2030, U.S. GDP is projected to reach $44.4 trillion, or 32.4% higher than the level in the “base scenario”—which excludes AI. At the same time, unemployment among knowledge workers will rise above levels typical of recessions, and their wages may fall by more than 10%—compared to the hypothetical earnings they would have in a “no AI” scenario. The “labor share” of the economy will shrink to 45.2%, while the “capital share” will rise to 54.8%.

Thus, as the influence of AI grows, the bulk of economic growth will accrue to capital owners rather than workers. This ratio between labor and capital income is evident in all three scenarios modeled by the Anthropic tool, according to Seeking Alpha. Even if average wages in the economy as a whole rise, according to the forecast, this growth will mainly benefit workers outside the knowledge economy—for example, in the construction sector or other blue-collar professions that will benefit from increased productivity driven by AI. However, a growing share of total GDP will still go to capital owners rather than to workers in the form of wages, writes Seeking Alpha. For investors focused on dividend and income strategies, this creates structurally favorable conditions for capital gains to outpace wage growth, regardless of which scenario plays out, the portal notes.

In August 2026, Anthropic surveyed more than 10,000 Americans about their expectations regarding AI’s capabilities, the pace of its adoption, and the state of the labor market. The median responses from participants were closest to the “significant” scenario for AI’s impact on the economy, as predicted by the company’s model. Only about 10% of those surveyed held views consistent with the “extreme” scenario.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor