Nobel Economist Simon Johnson Warns AI Is Shrinking White-Collar Demand

Simon Johnson, an MIT Sloan professor and 2024 Nobel laureate in economics, told the Financial Times that "nobody needs as many white-collar workers as they used to," arguing that generative AI is structurally shrinking demand for office jobs. The interview was published around June 22, 2026. Johnson, a former chief economist at the IMF, stressed that AI can directly substitute for routine knowledge work such as document drafting, analysis and decision support, and called for policy to "shape" the direction of the technology.