AI is fueling job fears. Strong managers can ease them

AI may be making some workers more worried about losing their jobs. But new research suggests managers have more influence over that anxiety than the technology itself.

Workers who use AI daily or multiple times a week are more than twice as likely to believe their jobs could disappear within five years than those who use it only a few times a month or year. Yet that relationship weakens substantially when employees feel respected by their managers and believe their organization cares about their wellbeing, according to Gallup's new study of nearly 30,000 U.S. workers, surveyed across four waves between 2023 and early 2026.

Among frequent AI users, the relationship between AI use and job-loss fears was 6.8 percentage points lower among workers who strongly agreed they were respected at work. The gap was 11.1 points lower among those who strongly agreed their organization cared about their wellbeing.

"The positive effects are really concentrated among the workplaces where workers feel like there's some trust with their managers," said Christos Makridis, a content senior researcher at Gallup in Washington who led the analysis.

The technology may be changing how work gets done, but managers have a significant role in shaping how employees experience that change.

But many managers are still finding their own footing with the technology. Managers aren't ready to lead the AI talent they're hiring, recent research has found, with many saying they need more training to oversee employees who use AI heavily.

Managers can change the equation

Gallup followed the same workers across multiple survey waves, rather than comparing different groups of people at a single point in time. That design let researchers examine how changes in an individual's AI use and workplace experiences tracked with changes in their concerns about job displacement.

"We're not comparing Joe with John," Makridis said. "We're comparing Joe in 2023 with Joe in 2024 and 2025 and 2026."

Frequent AI use itself was tied to greater anxiety, but that association weakened considerably when workers felt supported by their organizations and respected by their managers.

Makridis, who has studied technological change and its effects on workers for roughly a decade, said that may reflect the way employees interpret what AI means for their role.

"Managers are a critical lever by which they can inculcate that growth mindset among teams and workers," he said.

When the message from leadership is simply to "use AI to be more productive," he said, employees can lose sight of the broader purpose of their work and the value of their own contribution.

The finding also adds another dimension to the changing role of managers. New research on how relying too heavily on AI can erode managers' own decision-making puts more pressure on leaders to preserve their own judgment while helping employees adapt to the technology.

AI can make displacement feel more real

The findings also complicate the idea that simply becoming more familiar with a technology will make workers less afraid of it.

Makridis said generative AI has made advanced capabilities much more accessible than earlier forms of workplace technology. Workers can interact with increasingly capable systems using ordinary language, without needing the technical skills that previously stood between many employees and advanced AI tools.

For some workers, using the technology can therefore provide a direct view of what it is capable of.

"If you're a professional services worker, that is a coder or a software engineer, you're like, wow, this can work 20 times faster," Makridis said.

That may help explain why frequent AI users reported more concern about displacement rather than less. Seeing what the technology can do can make the possibility of workplace change feel more tangible.

Research published in Science has similarly found that AI-powered software could affect roughly half of all work tasks, with about one in five workers seeing at least half of their own tasks affected.

But AI exposure isn't the whole story. Gallup's findings suggest that two workers facing similar technological change can experience very different levels of anxiety depending on how supported and respected they feel at work.

Job fears can spill into the workplace

Workers who reported concerns that their jobs could be eliminated also reported lower engagement and job satisfaction and higher burnout and job-search activity than when those same workers reported no displacement concerns.

"When your workers are anxious about going in and being replaced and their livelihoods, that makes for a less productive workplace because it means that they're not going to be as concentrated," Makridis said.

He said that anxiety can spread through teams as employees start wondering who might be next to lose their job.

"That sort of toxicity can really spread and create a culture, a set of norms, language, time, etc., that just eats away at organizational productivity and creativity," he said.

That kind of cultural toxicity is especially costly right now, as many employers try to grow output without growing headcount. A recent report found turnover climbing as employers plan growth on constrained workforces, putting greater pressure on organizations to retain the workers they already have.

That makes manager support more than a question of employee sentiment. If job-loss anxiety is associated with lower engagement, higher burnout, and greater intent to look elsewhere, helping managers navigate AI conversations could have implications for retention and productivity, not just morale.

Small signals can matter

Asked what managers can actually do, Makridis didn't point to a sweeping new management program. Instead, he pointed to something smaller and more direct: making sure employees know they're valued for more than whatever AI can automate.

"Sometimes a precondition to unlocking that creativity is literally just appreciating the person for what they're doing every day," he said. "If somebody is fulfilling their responsibilities, acknowledge that."

It doesn't have to be a grand gesture, either.

"You don't need to throw a birthday party, although that might be nice to do," Makridis said. "But it's just small things that end up being cumulatively large."

That doesn't mean avoiding difficult conversations about AI or pretending the technology won't change people's jobs. It means making sure employees understand where AI fits into their work, what their own contribution brings to the table, and how their role may evolve.

However clear the corporate strategy coming from the top, Makridis said it's managers who interpret it for the people actually doing the work.

"Managers are the courts," he said. "They're the ones that are reckoning every day, on the small issues, big issues and everything in between."