Study: Over 260,000 Workers in Massachusetts Could Face Job Loss From AI by 2031

A new Tufts University study, the American AI Jobs Risk Index, estimates that more than 207,000 Boston-area workers and about 260,000 statewide in Massachusetts could lose jobs to AI over the next five years, resulting in approximately $25.6 billion in lost wages.

According to a Boston Globe report, Massachusetts has the highest risk of AI job losses in the United States. Only workers in the District of Columbia rank higher. Greater Boston is also sixth among U.S. metropolitan areas for expected job losses.

Vulnerable roles include writers, editors, coders, data analysts, and market researchers. Some hands-on positions, such as dishwashers, floor finishers, and certain surgical room technicians, appear comparatively safer.

Researchers at MIT's Sloan School of Management are developing methods to identify which jobs are most vulnerable to AI and to help guide career planning and how employers frame opportunities. These findings, however, are preliminary and not yet peer-reviewed.

According to the Globe's reporting, the researchers have been working with There's An AI For That, a popular website containing an index of available AI apps for consumers and businesses that is rapidly being updated. The MIT Sloan team has collected information on over 13,000 apps. They submitted the data through GPT 5.1 to determine which tasks can be performed by each app. Human researchers double-checked the results.

Thomas Malone, the MIT Sloan professor heading up the research team, said that some industries require human empathy, a sense of ethics, and a necessity for teamwork, making them less volatile to displacement by AI. He cited the example of the physical limitations of today's robots, which can't equal the dexterity of human hands for certain health care jobs.

For now, though, Malone and his team are working to understand how AI will make its way through the economy and impact our nation's labor force.