Bridging the Gap
The Swift Centre's 'Bridge the Gap' project seeks to improve AI policy making by providing open sourced policy advice that is built upon robust forecasts on AI capabilities, risks, and impacts by the world-leading team at the Swift Centre for Applied Forecasting.
Review forecasts and policy advice5 forecasts • 29 policy advice submissions
Key Info
Categories Covered
5Policy Advice Submissions
29How it Works
Forecast
The Swift Centre team provides forecasts on AI capabilities, impacts, and risks.
Policy
Anyone can submit policy advice using the forecasts and have it published on the dashboard.
Review
Policymakers, advisors, researchers, and funders can review the policy advice submitted.
Submissions
By December 31, 2027, the total number of workforce jobs in either the UK “Information and Communication” (Section J) or “Financial and Insurance” (Section K) sectors will have decreased by 10% or more from their September 2025 baseline?
Review resolution criteria
The baseline figures are taken from the ONS December 16, 2025 release, which captures the state of the market from September 2025:
Information & Communication (Section J): 1.602m jobs
Financial & Insurance (Section K): 1.110m jobs
The source data will be:
Primary Source: ONS Dataset JOBS02: Workforce jobs by industry.
Resolution Date: The forecast will resolve based on the March 2028 release (which provides the final Q4 2027 figures).
Data Source: Resolution will use the 'Information and Communication' (Section J) and 'Financial and Insurance' (Section K) figures of the WFJ SA sheet (Seasonally Adjusted).
To resolve as YES, the headcount in at least one of these sectors must fall to or below the following targets by the final 2027 report:
Sector J Target: Equal or less than 1,441,800 jobs (A 10% drop from 1.602m)
Sector K Target: Equal or less than 999,000 jobs (A 10% drop from 1.110m)
Background
Workforces in the “Information and Communication” and “Financial and Insurance” industries in the UK have not exhibited precipitous swings over the past thirty years. Information and Communication jobs have grown at a fairly uniform pace from 800,000 in 1996 to some 1.6 million today, with some modest downturns along the way, while Financial and Insurance employment has held steady at 1.1-1.2 million. Even through major economic shocks, these sectors have avoided the swings seen in manufacturing or retail.
However, many observers are highlighting the risk of AI-driven job losses across the spectrum of employment, with specific concerns naturally attached to industries where it is easiest to imagine AI supplanting human workers. These two sectors are now the twin poles of the AI displacement debate:
Information and Communication is exposed due to the collapse in cost for natural language and code generation.
Finance and Insurance is vulnerable to the rise of agentic AI capable of automating the “reasoning loops” involved in compliance, auditing, and administrative analysis.
Recent research from the UK’s AI and the Future of Work Unit (published in early 2026) has begun to quantify this. Their pilot studies suggest that while mass unemployment hasn’t hit the aggregate stats yet, we are already seeing a silent hollowing out of entry-level roles. Their data indicates that AI-exposed occupations saw a 13% drop in early-career hiring in late 2025, a potential leading indicator that the total headcount may finally be ready to break its 30-year trend.
This question postulates that by the end of next year, one or the other of these workforces will undergo a sharper contraction than any that has been recorded over the past thirty years. While the Financial and Insurance workforce contracted by 10% at least once in this period, it did not happen as rapidly as this question envisages, and the Information and Communication workforce has not experienced a contraction of more than 6.7%. Importantly, because organisations are not required to cite specific causes/reasons when reporting redundancies, the question does not stipulate that the contractions must be only due to AI adoption. Nevertheless, given the historic trends in these industries, a drop of 10% in such a short space of time would point to a significant shift in workforce practices – the sort of structural shift which AI advancement and adoption is currently the leading predictor for.
The Swift Centre forecasters estimated the likelihood of this scenario materializing in the specified time frame at 23%. The bulk of the forecasters landed between 10% and 30%, with two outliers at 35% and 55%.
The forecasters saw the persistent uncertainties about the uptake, use-cases, and effects of generative AI in these industries as high enough that an essentially unprecedented employment disruption was more unlikely than likely in this relatively short time window. That said, the very same uncertainties about the near-term shape of AI uptake ensure that the chance is non-trivial, and no forecaster assigned a likelihood below 10%. Probabilistically, also, the fact that the question requires only a qualifying shift in either of these two AI-vulnerable sectors supports the odds of it resolving positively.
Swift Centre Forecast Visual
Policy advice
Policy strategy to address forecasted AI-driven employment contractions in the UK Information and Financial sectors
#1Jesse Yu
Summary
This memo presents policy options to preempt a forecasted major workforce contraction in the UK Information and Communication (Section J) and Financial and Insurance (Section K) sectors by EOY 2027. Baseline forecasts project a 23% probability of a 10% workforce drop. Assessing structural hiring freezes against existing UK employment protections, the domestic risk is evaluated at approximately 35%. Establishing an upskilling subsidy is recommended to incentivise early-career retention, neutralising the structural hollowing out of the...
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Policy Options for Managing AI-Driven Structural Employment Disruption
#2Mahi H Shah
Summary
Expert forecasting places more than a 1-in-5 probability on an unprecedented contraction in UK tech or financial sector employment by December 2027, with early indicators already visible in 2025 data; the window for proportionate, self-financing intervention is narrow. This advice is submitted for a decision on which of three options the Secretary of State wishes to pursue.
AI and Jobs: A Policy for Protecting UK Workers
#3Keon Robert
Summary
LLMs and “World Models” are improving exponentially, and it is natural for all firms to adopt them into their ecosystem. Here, the Government cannot be a roadblock toward such adoption of AI, or else miss out on the productivity gains sorely needed within the UK economy. It will take time for this transition to occur, but worker displacement appears inevitable in certain sectors. To prepare, we must: upskill, retrain, and guarantee public services for those...
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Policy response to potential AI-driven workforce contraction in high-exposure UK sectors
#4Rufaro Daniel Nyakudya
Summary
Swift Centre estimates a 23% chance of a sharp AI-linked workforce contraction in a key UK white-collar sector by end-2027. While not the central forecast, such a drop would be historically unusual and likely preceded by quieter forms of labour-market disempowerment. Government should therefore act now to improve visibility into AI-linked workforce change and prepare targeted transition support before disruption is visible in headline employment data.
The Case for Taxing Automation
#5Submitted Anonymously
Summary
While Smith’s forecasters suggest that the likelihood of workforces in the information & communication or in the finance & insurance sector in the UK are declining by 10% or more by December 2027 is relatively low, it is still a plausible scenario. Furthermore, even if such a disruption does not materialise within this rather short timeframe, there is substantial evidence pointing to larger workforce disruption in the near future driven by AI and the automation...
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Policy Response to Forecast AI-Driven Workforce Contraction in UK Information & Communication and Financial & Insurance Sectors
#6Shakib Ahmed and Rajib Ahmed
Summary
The Swift Centre forecasts a 23% probability that UK Information & Communication (1.6m jobs) or Financial & Insurance (1.1m jobs) sectors will contract by 10%+ by December 2027. While unlikely in this timeframe, such a contraction would be historically unprecedented and the direction of travel-a 13% drop in early-career hiring in AI-exposed roles already observed-demands proactive action. We assess the probability at 20–25%. Even a one-in-four chance of this scale of disruption in sectors contributing...
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Managing the workforce impact of AI in the Information and Communication, and Financial and Insurance sectors.
#7Submitted Anonymously
Summary
While this submission broadly agrees with forecasters on a 23% likelihood of a 10% contraction in either the Information and Communication or Financial and Insurance sectors by the end of 2027, the risk warrants preparation now. AI capabilities continue to expand rapidly, business adoption is rising, and the UK labour market is unusually exposed to change from AI. In March 2026, 26% of UK businesses reported using at least one AI technology, up 8% on...
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Policy Advice on AI Job readiness planning
#8Joseph Tendeukai Kunashe Ndondo
Summary
Policy advice for mitigating job losses in the Information and Communication or Financial and Insurance. Our policy advice is a call to review sector-wide AI adoption, job integration and job loss risks in light of prevailing job trends and job loss predictions due to transformational shifts in the labour sector.