As of November 30, 2025, only about six weeks have passed since the prediction (made on October 17, 2025) and essentially none of the 10‑year forecast horizon (“the decade ahead”) has played out. The claim is specifically about how US labor-market dynamics will unfold over the entire coming decade for workers in occupations threatened by AI and automation (e.g., drivers): that, in general, a recruiting cycle into new, higher‑paying roles will precede large‑scale elimination of the old roles.

Current empirical evidence and forecasting work mostly emphasize that AI adoption and its labor‑market effects unfold over many years, concentrated in the 2030s, not in the very short run:

• McKinsey and the World Economic Forum estimate that large portions of work could be automated, but suggest that the bulk of these effects will materialize between about 2030 and 2060, with a midpoint around 2045, implying a long diffusion and adjustment process rather than immediate mass displacement. (mckinsey.com)
• The Penn Wharton Budget Model finds that, as of 2025, AI’s impact on productivity and employment is still small; employment has only modestly fallen in the tiny share of jobs that are almost fully automatable, and slowed in highly exposed occupations, indicating early, mixed signals rather than a settled pattern of how transitions will work. (budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu)
• A Yale/Brookings analysis of the US labor market concludes that, since the rise of tools like ChatGPT in late 2022, there has not yet been significant, clearly attributable AI‑driven disruption; observed changes are largely consistent with pre‑existing trends, underscoring that any major reallocation of labor is still in its early stages. (theguardian.com)
• IMF work on AI and jobs stresses that around 60% of jobs in advanced economies may eventually be affected, but frames this as a forward‑looking risk over the next decade(s), highlighting the need for policies to manage worker transitions rather than documenting outcomes that have already occurred. (thenationalnews.com)

These sources collectively indicate that we are at the very beginning of the adoption curve and that large‑scale job reconfiguration due to AI is expected mainly later in the 2020s and 2030s. It is far too early to determine whether, on average across threatened occupations, US employers will in fact recruit workers into new, better‑paid roles before old roles are eliminated at scale. Some early data even show stagnation or slight declines in highly AI‑exposed jobs, but this is neither large‑scale nor clearly accompanied (or not) by the kind of systematic, prior recruiting cycle Friedberg describes. (budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu)

Because the prediction is explicitly about a full decade-long process and the relevant period has essentially not yet occurred, the correctness of the claim cannot be evaluated at this time.