Instructional Designer

Much of an instructional designer's work is producing learning content: researching a topic, outlining a course, writing scripts and slides, building quizzes, adding captions and alt text. That is squarely what generative AI does. When the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), a workplace research firm, broke the job down task by task in 2023, it found AI could draft or speed up most of the common tasks: research, outlines, written content, editing, media ideas, quiz questions and accessibility work. The parts that benefit less, it said, are the up-front thinking: working out what people actually need to learn and setting the learning goals. Its conclusion was that "much of what instructional designers do is generating learning content," so AI "will disrupt the profession in a profound way."

The official numbers are not dramatic, partly because they barely track this job. The government no longer counts instructional designers separately; O*NET folds them into instructional coordinators, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects to grow just 2% from 2025 to 2035, slower than average, with about 23,100 openings a year, and it warns budgets may limit demand. Demand for corporate training itself is healthier: BLS projects training and development specialists to grow 11%, partly because workers need retraining as technology changes. That could create work for designers who move toward strategy and delivery.

This is a 4 because of the rubric's first principle: when AI can do most of the daily work, that matters even before job losses show up in the data, and the drafting work AI does best is the work entry-level designers were hired for. We have not found reliable recent hiring data for this job, so the score rests on what AI can do, not on measured job cuts. i4cp itself predicted most employers would use AI to make more and better training rather than hire fewer designers. What would change the score: hiring data showing employers doing what i4cp predicted and still hiring junior designers would move this to 3. Evidence of instructional design teams shrinking would move it to 5.