Nearly one third of students and workers currently enrolled in school have changed or considered changing their target industry due to AI, according to a CNBC and SurveyMonkey Quarterly AI and Jobs Survey published on Aug. 19. That pressure lands on people already trying to buy into a job market that keeps shifting under them. The survey found that 45% have changed or reconsidered which skills they’re developing, 34% have changed or reconsidered which jobs they’re applying for, and 35% have changed or reconsidered which companies they’re hoping to join.
Who Has the Power
The survey polled 1,686 students and workers across the U.S. from July 22 to 27, and the modeled error estimate was plus or minus 2 percentage points. Its numbers point to a system where students and workers are forced to adjust themselves to whatever employers, tech firms, and the broader machine of hiring decide to reward next. The CNBC report said almost 40% of students and workers enrolled in school have considered changing their major, field of study or coursework due to AI, rising to 44% for students who are not employed. It also said 31% have changed or considered changing their target industry due to AI, and that 39% of students who are not employed said the same.
Allison Shrivastava, education and labor market economist at Niche, a school ranking and review site, said, "They're hearing a lot of back and forth — it's going to create jobs, it's not going to create jobs." She said she was worried that students are "reacting before we have all the information" about how AI will impact certain careers. That uncertainty is the point for the people making the decisions. Everyone else gets to scramble.
Who Gets Crushed
Stephanie Park, 20, a sophomore at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast, said her ultimate goal is to become a doctor and researcher. She said, "AI has made me wonder what those careers will look like by the time I finish training," and said she is particularly interested in patient care and "the human side of medicine." Park said that with more people confiding in AI chatbots and consulting them for health advice, she worries that "human connection" will become less of a priority in medicine.
That fear runs straight through the bottom of the hierarchy. Students are being asked to plan their lives around systems they don’t control, while the institutions around them keep selling the same promise: study hard, pay up, and maybe the market won’t chew you up later. The CNBC report said almost 40% of students and workers enrolled in school have considered changing their major, field of study or coursework due to AI, and 31% have changed or considered changing their target industry due to AI. Those aren’t abstract percentages. They’re people trying to dodge a future built by bosses and algorithms.
The report said an April report from Gallup and Lumina Foundation, an education-focused private nonprofit, found similar results: about 42% of bachelor's degree students and about 56% of associate degree students said they had given at least "a fair amount" of consideration to changing their majors due to AI concerns, based on a survey of 3,801 U.S. students conducted in October 2025. Courtney Brown, Ph.D., vice president of impact and planning at Lumina Foundation, told CNBC Make It in April that many students are worried about whether "the time and the money that they're investing in getting these degrees is going to pay off" in the job market.
What They're Calling Preparation
Jessica Roffe, a career coach for college students and the founder of coaching company Career Beginnings, said she understands why students are "very hesitant about certain majors" right now. She pointed to computer science, saying the unemployment rate for computer science graduates rose to 7% as of 2024 and that, after over-hiring several years ago, "a lot of the big tech companies" have slowed down their on-campus recruiting efforts. The market giveth, the market taketh away.
Roffe said that doesn't mean computer science isn't a worthwhile major, adding, "Every type of industry needs computer science students, not just the big tech companies, so if you can pivot and be a computer scientist at a bank or a hospital, you can still be really valuable." That’s the language of survival inside corporate capture: don’t ask whether the system serves people, just find a different employer.
She said students should focus on building skills that make them more marketable rather than trying to identify the one career field or major that will guarantee a job. She said critical thinking skills are "huge" in today's job market, along with "problem-solving, curiosity and skepticism." She said those abilities are especially important in roles that heavily involve AI because employers want workers who can rigorously evaluate AI outputs rather than "just taking what it says and believing it."
Shrivastava said she hopes students will pursue fields they're genuinely excited about, not just occupations they think will provide the most job opportunities. She said, "You don't have to have it all figured out. You should work hard and study what you're interested in, what you're good at, and keep those things in consideration." That’s the soft sell of a hard system: adapt, self-manage, and keep moving while the institutions above you keep the leverage.