Forrester: US Human Agent Jobs to Fall 350,000 by 2031

What happened

Forrester Research has forecast a decline of roughly 350,000 human customer service agent roles in the United States by 2031, pointing to a structural shift in how contact centres are staffed as AI takes on a growing share of routine service work. The research firm frames this not as a wholesale replacement of human support but as a contraction toward smaller, more specialised human teams working alongside automation.

According to the coverage, the reduction reflects AI and self-service tools absorbing high-volume, low-complexity interactions, while remaining human roles are expected to shift toward more complex, judgement-heavy or emotionally sensitive cases.

Why it matters

For customer experience leaders, this is less a story about headcount and more about how service organisations will need to be redesigned. If routine queries are increasingly deflected to AI, the human agents who remain will be handling the interactions that are hardest to automate — complaints, edge cases, emotionally charged moments — which demands a different hiring, training and coaching model than today's high-volume contact centre.

From a behavioral-economics lens, this shift changes the psychological contract customers have with support channels. Trust, empathy and perceived effort will increasingly hinge on the quality of a smaller number of human touchpoints, making each one more consequential to loyalty and satisfaction than in a model where humans handle high volumes of simple queries.

By the numbers

• 350,000 fewer human customer service agent roles projected in the US by 2031, according to Forrester.

The Renascence take

The headline number will read to some as a story about job losses, but the more useful read is about role redefinition. Organisations that treat this purely as a cost-reduction exercise risk hollowing out the very capability — skilled human judgement — that AI cannot yet replicate.

The real opportunity here isn't fewer agents; it's better ones. As AI absorbs routine volume, the value of each remaining human interaction rises sharply, so the smart move is to invest the savings into deeper training, more authority to resolve issues, and stronger emotional intelligence — not simply to shrink the team and keep the same operating model. Brands that under-invest in the humans they keep will find that AI has raised customer expectations for every interaction, including the ones still handled by people.