We provide new evidence on the changing nature of work and its influence on individuals’ capacity to work by linking historical measures of occupational job demands with harmonized data on individual abilities from a unique survey conducted in the RAND American Life Panel in 2018. We start by examining how job demands have evolved over time between 2003 and 2018 for different dimensions of abilities (cognitive, physical, sensory and psychomotor), overall and by educational group. We then decompose job demand changes into within-occupation changes and changes in the economy’s distribution of occupations. Finally, we provide evidence on how individuals’ work capacities have evolved over time due to job demand changes.