I just came across a paper from Anthropic (the company behind Claude) on what AI could do to the economy.
They built a model of how AI changes cognitive work by 2030. Right now, management, professional, sales and office jobs make up about 62% of total U.S. employment. The model looks at how AI will change that percentage and how it will affect GDP. Here's the paper, and here's the interactive version if you want to play with the numbers. And if you want my digest, here's what I took from it.
The paper doesn't pick the most likely scenario. It lays out three scenarios and leaves the odds to you. It also doesn't analyze robotics or the effect on real estate.
The three scenarios
Scenario #1, the modest one: AI adds about 1.6% to GDP by 2030 and barely moves unemployment.
Scenario #2, the substantial one: GDP goes up about 8% and cognitive employment falls 4%.
Scenario #3, the extreme one: AI does almost half of today's cognitive work by 2030, the economy grows 15% a year, and nearly 1 in 5 cognitive workers is out of a job. Their wages end up 11.5% below where they'd otherwise be. Everyone else's wages, including labor, end up 34% higher.
What I'm already seeing
This is the interesting part, because I'm already seeing that last one myself. A few weeks ago, my friend Kevin from Idaho told me master electricians are making $300K+ at Micron's new chip plant in Boise, which was unheard of five years ago. That's nearly double what the typical lawyer makes. I don't see that kind of jump in office jobs.
Who keeps the pie
What also stuck out was how much of every dollar goes to capital and how much goes to labor. Today, of every dollar the economy produces, about 60 cents goes to workers and 40 cents goes to capital. As AI takes on more of the work, more of each dollar shifts to whoever owns the capital. In the extreme scenario, the worker share falls from 60 cents to 45, and a larger portion goes to capital.
Capital is the GPUs and the data centers. It's also the land and the buildings. In an AI world, whatever becomes more abundant gets cheaper, and whatever stays scarce, like capital and land, gets more expensive. So the move is simple: own some of it.
Are you seeing trade wages jump in your market, and how do you see AI affecting CRE? Tell me what you're seeing.
This first ran in my Value Builder newsletter on November 8, 2026. Subscribe here.
