A new survey has a name for what workers are feeling, and researchers say employers aren't doing enough about it
More than half of workers now say they're afraid of becoming professionally obsolete, a feeling researchers have started calling FOBO, short for "fear of becoming obsolete." It's a widespread anxiety, according to a new ETS Human Progress Report released Aug. 14, and researchers who study how adults learn and how companies invest in training say employer training hasn't kept pace with what workers say they need.
The report, based on a Harris Poll survey of more than 15,000 U.S. adults, found that 58% of workers report FOBO. That number climbs to 74% among technology workers and 73% in financial services. Just as striking, 85% of respondents said upskilling is no longer optional, yet only 71% report actually doing it, which trails the global average of 77%.
The fear of AI skills obsolescence is rational
Margaret Beier, professor and chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences at Rice University in Houston, said the finding didn't surprise her at all.
"One of the things that I'm looking at is how technology is disrupting jobs and the types of jobs that are available and how individual learners are going to need to reskill and upskill," Beier said.
She added that the emotional side of this shift remains understudied.
"The worry and anxiety for whether you're going to be able to find a new job and what skills you need are going to be very difficult for learners," she said.
Christopher Stanton, professor of business administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School in Boston, pointed to a different pattern. He noted that many workers are eager to use AI rather than avoiding it, though that enthusiasm doesn't mean workers feel equipped.
"If the other interpretation is I have a skills gap in the sense that AI technologies are changing all the time and I don't know how to keep up with them and my employer can't keep up with training, that's another way of maybe suggesting that people are leaning in, but they don't have the resources that they need to master the technologies," Stanton said.
Peter Cappelli, professor of management and director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School in Philadelphia, said some of the fear stems from confusion over what "new skills" even means.
"Workers rightly worry about this because they keep hearing about the need for new skills or retraining for AI, but you don't have to look hard to see that there is never any discussion about what those new skills are," Cappelli said.
Why AI training can't keep pace
The survey also found that 68% of workers say the cost of upskilling is difficult to cover, 63% struggle to find the time, and 57% say they can't get adequate employer support. Those numbers echo what Beier and Stanton both described, a pattern of training built for a fast-moving technology but delivered through slow-moving systems.
"By the time you implement that training program, it's going to be out of date," Beier said.
Stanton echoed the same frustration, describing what he's heard from learning and development leaders trying to keep pace.
"If we roll out curriculum for this vintage of a tool, it's going to be obsolete in two months anyway," he said.
What actually gets workers to upskill
Stanton pointed to a factor beyond time and money that shapes whether workers actually engage with training, and it comes down to whether the training leads anywhere. His past research on upskilling participation found that workers weigh whether a program will help their career or pay, or whether it's simply another expectation added to their plate without any reward attached.
Beier pointed to a demographic shift that adds to the pressure.
"Organizations should be worried about people having the skills coming out of educational environments. There are just fewer young people coming out of universities, so the labor pool is shifting a little bit to older people, and we need to really be cognizant of that," she said.
Who should carry the load
On whether workers should be expected to invest their own time and money in staying current, Beier said the responsibility shouldn't fall on them alone.
"What I worry about is that the employers are going to really put the onus on the workers and not take as much responsibility as they should or need to," she said.
Stanton was less certain employers will move quickly.
"In the interim, there is going to be the onus on workers to do a lot of self-learning and to figure things out," he said. But he warned that companies betting on workers to close their own shortfalls could pay a real price.
"My guess is the companies that don't actually get out ahead of these investments in training are likely to fall behind," Stanton said. He added that the assumption behind many recent job cuts, that AI plus a leaner, self-upskilled workforce could cover the same work, "probably hasn't played out in the way that many of the executives who made those decisions to cut thought they would."
Stanton's advice for learning and development leaders is to use AI tools directly, rather than only choosing a vendor's curriculum. He said most L&D organizations still set up a learning management system and pick a vendor, when the same AI tools reshaping jobs are now capable of building and updating training material in-house, on a timeline that can actually keep up.
Beier pointed to a different resource organizations could lean on more, the Department of Labor's O*NET database, a free tool that lists the skills and outlook tied to hundreds of occupations, so workers and employers can compare what a job requires against what someone already knows.
Other employers appear to be reaching the same conclusion on their own, that training built once and left alone doesn't hold up. HRD America has previously reported that many companies' AI training plans are already outdated, and that employer support measurably raises AI adoption rates. One approach some employers have taken is investing well beyond their own walls: a group of technology companies recently launched a $500 million initiative to retrain American workers.
Still, for most workers, the challenge Beier and Stanton describe remains. Workers are telling researchers they're ready to adapt. Whether employers give them the time, money and direction to do it will determine how this fear plays out over the next few years.
