Anthropic Economic Index: Why the “Skills Gap” is About to Explode

2. Effective Coverage vs. Headline Coverage

Market analysts love to talk about “task coverage”—the percentage of a job AI can “do.” Anthropic’s new Effective AI Coverage metric is more pragmatic. It weights tasks by time spent and success rates.

• High Impact: Roles like Radiologists and Data Entry Keyers see massive practical impact because AI nails the high-frequency, time-intensive parts of their day.
• Lower Impact: Conversely, Software Developers and Teachers experience lower effective impact than headlines suggest, mainly because “bottleneck” tasks still require high-stakes human oversight.

3. The 19-Hour Horizon

While lab benchmarks suggest that AI fails on tasks lasting more than 2 hours, real-world data tells a different story.

• Through human-AI collaboration (augmentation), users are completing projects that would take 19 hours manually.
• This is a 10x improvement over the standard autonomous benchmark.
• The Insight: Success isn’t about the model—it’s about workflow design. Breaking big projects into smaller steps and course-correcting in real-time is the new “smart money” strategy.

4. The Productivity Reality Check

Anthropic has revised the annual US productivity boost from 1.8% down to a more grounded 1.0% to 1.2% once you account for real-world reliability and errors.

Don’t let the “haircut” fool you. A sustained 1% annual boost would return us to the “Golden Age” of productivity seen in the late 1990s.

The Strategist’s Take

The AI transition is moving 10x faster than the spread of the internet or the PC. We are seeing a “deskilling” of routine technical roles while simultaneously “upskilling” managers who can leverage AI for high-level stakeholder management and negotiation.

If you’re a B2B founder, your roadmap should no longer be about “adding AI.” It should be about redesigning roles around where the 12x leverage actually exists.