Some roles considered safe included manual jobs like roofers and rail and dredge operators, hazardous material removal workers and painters. As AI advances, many manual labor jobs figure to be around for the long haul. There is no shortage of hype around AI coming for jobs, and while the U.S. labor market has begun to sputter, hard evidence of AI-related job losses is scant. “Many are concerned about AI replacing traditional white-collar roles, while trade jobs offer hands-on work that’s difficult to automate. “It’s a very wide misconception that we are on the verge of having humanoid robots basically replace workers.