ServiceNow CEO Predicts Mid-30s College Graduate Unemployment Due to AI

ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott told CNBC that AI agents could push college graduate unemployment into the mid-30s in the next few years, as his company has already eliminated 90% of human customer service use cases.

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Bill McDermott, the CEO of ServiceNow, made a bold prediction that AI agents could push college graduate unemployment 'easily into the mid-30s in the next couple of years'. This is not a warning, but a forward-looking statement from the head of a company that sells the very AI tools driving this displacement. McDermott's candor is unusual, as most executives selling automation focus on 'augmentation and upskilling' rather than directly addressing job losses. The baseline he is projecting from is already deteriorating, with underemployment among recent college graduates reaching 42.5% - the highest level since 2020. This suggests the displacement does not need to eliminate jobs entirely, but can push the underemployed into unemployment by compressing the bottom of the occupational ladder. Independent research by Anthropic found actual AI adoption is just a fraction of theoretical capability, but job growth is already slowing in high-exposure fields like programming, customer service, and data entry. While ServiceNow is reskilling displaced workers, this 'builder's privilege' is not available to the company's customers, who will face the full brunt of AI-driven job losses.