AI's Impact on Jobs: Yale Study Finds No Significant Disruption in US Labor Market

AI has had zero effect on jobs so far: Yale study

Yale researchers say that despite the anxiety about AI taking people's jobs, there's very little evidence of it actually happening. Economists with Yale's Budget Lab, a non-partisan policy research group, took a look at how US employment has changed since the November 2022 debut of ChatGPT and the sequent release of other generative AI models. They saw nothing to be alarmed about. "Overall, our metrics indicate that the broader labor market has not experienced a discernible disruption since ChatGPT's release 33 months ago, undercutting fears that AI automation is currently eroding the demand for cognitive labor across the economy," said Martha Gimbel, Molly Kinder, Joshua Kendall, and Maddie Lee in a report summary. The leaders of AI companies have been stoking those fears - an effective way to get meetings with lawmakers. In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei expressed concern that within five years, AI could cut the number of entry-level white collar jobs in half. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has made similar pronouncements. And major companies conducting layoffs like IBM and Salesforce have held themselves up as examples of that narrative, though their employee culls may be more focused on outsourcing than automation. Smaller companies like Fiverr have also cited AI amid layoffs. AI cheerleader Microsoft recently added fuel to the fire with a report on jobs most likely to be affected by AI, only to later distance itself from the blaze by noting, "our study does not draw any conclusions about jobs being eliminated." In Microsoft's own case, the culls appear to be a way to reduce expenses and mollify investors following its massive capital expenditures on data centers that fuel its AI ambitions. The Yale researchers' nothingburger result has precedent. In 2023, a study by the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) concluded that generative AI would probably not replace most workers. A study of Danish workers published in April determined that generative AI had no material impact on wages or jobs. Another such study published in February found "overall employment effects are modest, as reduced demand in exposed occupations is offset by productivity-driven increases in labor demand at AI-adopting firms." There is some contradictory data. A recent Stanford Digital Economy Lab study claims that recent college graduates in occupations most exposed to AI have seen a 13 percent relative decline in employment compared to occupations more insulated from AI. But the consensus appears to be that generative AI has not had a meaningful impact on the labor market so far. Enterprise skepticism of the technology may be one reason for that. ®

AI is not killing jobs, finds new US study

The mass adoption of ChatGPT is yet to have a big disruptive impact on US jobs, contradicting claims by chief executives and tech bosses that artificial intelligence is already upending labour markets. Research from economists at the Yale University Budget Lab and the Brookings Institution think-tank indicates that, since OpenAI launched its popular chatbot in November 2022, generative AI has not had a more dramatic effect on employment than earlier technological breakthroughs. The research, based on an analysis of official data on the labour market and figures from the tech industry on usage and exposure to AI, also finds little evidence that the tools are putting people out of work. The study follows widespread concern that generative AI will spark job losses -- and even the disappearance of certain types of work -- amid a US labour market that has recently weakened. "Despite how quickly AI technology has progressed, the labour market over the past three years has been a story of continuity over change," said Molly Kinder, a senior fellow at Brookings who co-authored the research. "We are not in an economy-wide jobs apocalypse right now, it's mostly stable. That should be a reassuring message to an anxious public." Martha Gimbel, the co-author who heads the Yale Budget Lab, said: "The labour market doesn't feel great, so it feels correct that AI is taking people's jobs. But we've looked at this many, many different ways, and we really cannot find any sign that this is happening." While the analysis suggests ChatGPT -- one of the most widely-used text-based forms of generative AI -- is rapidly changing the mix of occupations on offer to tech workers, it is not shifting the composition of jobs throughout the entire US economy at a much swifter pace than the arrival of computers and the internet. "AI has, so far, not defied gravity," said Kinder. "We are in very early days of companies figuring out how to redesign themselves with this technology." The research, which was co-authored with the Yale Budget Lab's Joshua Kendall and Maddie Lee, also finds limited evidence that graduates in the world's largest economy have struggled to find work because of the rise of generative AI. The unemployment rate for those with a bachelor's degree aged 20-24 soared to 9.3 per cent in August, more than double the 4.4 per cent rate recorded in April. But there is little to distinguish the positions taken by those in the 20-24 age range, compared with those on offer from older graduates aged 25-29. The lack of change in the occupational mix suggests the difficulties of finding work for those just out of college has little to do with technological change. The findings conflict with assertions from chief executives and tech bosses that generative AI is swiftly reshaping the labour market. A new report from the British Standards Institution, which surveyed more than 850 business leaders across eight countries and analysed company annual reports, found 39 per cent of those polled said AI had led them to cut entry-level roles. Another 43 per cent said they were expecting further reductions in a year. Dario Amodei, chief executive of AI start-up Anthropic, in May warned of the mass elimination of roles in fields such as law, consulting and finance, and claimed the technology had the potential to wipe out half of entry-level jobs. In an interview with Axios, he said unemployment would jump to 10-20 per cent in the next five years -- up from a current level of 4.3 per cent. Meanwhile, OpenAI chief Sam Altman has said AI would eliminate some job categories, such as customer service. Many economists, however, believe claims by CEOs and the tech industry are -- at least on an economy-wide level -- overblown. "There is a lot of pressure on managers to do something with AI . . . and there is the hype that is contributing to it," Daron Acemoglu, Nobel Prize-winning economist and professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "But not many people are doing anything super creative with it yet." Acemoglu added that AI companies were incentivised to drum up attention for their technologies to encourage companies to build the computing capacity they need to create bigger AI models. A recent study from Goldman Sachs Research estimated that AI adoption could displace 6-7 per cent of the US workforce, but said the impact will probably be "transitory". The Yale Budget Lab intends to update their data every month. "It is an open question [whether or not AI will change the labour market] and we should be monitoring this," said Gimbel. "But let's not put the cart before the horse here."

New research from Yale says that AI has not yet disrupted US employment

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Connecting the dots: The wide adoption of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools has not yet led to large-scale disruption in the US labor market, according to new research from the Yale University Budget Lab and the Brookings Institution. Despite months of warnings from technology executives that AI would upend employment, the study finds little evidence that the technology has displaced workers more severely than earlier innovations such as computers or the internet. The research, which draws on federal labor market data and industry figures on AI exposure, suggests that fears of an immediate jobs crisis are overstated. "Despite how quickly AI technology has progressed, the labor market over the past three years has been a story of continuity over change," Molly Kinder, a senior fellow at Brookings and co-author of the paper, told The Financial Times. "We are not in an economy-wide jobs apocalypse right now; it's mostly stable. That should be a reassuring message to an anxious public." Her co-author, Martha Gimbel, who leads the Yale Budget Lab, emphasized that while many workers believe artificial intelligence is responsible for job losses, the team's analysis repeatedly failed to uncover evidence supporting that view. While ChatGPT is altering the types of roles available to workers in the technology industry, the researchers found it has not yet shifted the employment mix across the broader US economy at an unusually fast pace. The paper, co-authored with Yale researchers Joshua Kendall and Maddie Lee, also examined the position of recent college graduates. Although the unemployment rate among 20- to 24-year-olds with a bachelor's degree rose to 9.3 percent in August from 4.4 percent in April, the team found little evidence to suggest generative AI was responsible. Young graduates are struggling to find work, the researchers said, but the pattern is not materially different from that of older degree-holders between the ages of 25 and 29. The study stands in contrast to warnings from some of the industry's most prominent figures. A survey released by the British Standards Institution of more than 850 business executives found that 39 percent reported AI had already led to cuts in entry-level roles, while 43 percent said they planned further reductions within a year. Executives including Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei have issued more dramatic projections. In May, Amodei warned that AI adoption could lead to widespread elimination of positions in law, finance and consulting, and predicted that unemployment in the US could rise to between 10 and 20 percent within five years, compared to the current rate of 4.3 percent. At the same time, OpenAI's Sam Altman has argued that customer service is among the job categories most at risk of elimination. Some economists say the gulf between evidence and executive warnings underscores the role of hype in discussions of AI's impact. "There is a lot of pressure on managers to do something with AI . . . and there is the hype that is contributing to it," Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said. "But not many people are doing anything super creative with it yet." Acemoglu added that AI developers have strong incentives to market their technologies as transformative in order to spur broader corporate investment in computing infrastructure required for advanced models. Goldman Sachs Research has estimated that AI could ultimately displace 6 to 7 percent of the US workforce, though it concluded the effect would likely be temporary. Gimbel of Yale said her team will continue updating its dataset on a monthly basis to track any shifts as adoption continues. "It is an open question [whether or not AI will change the labor market] and we should be monitoring this," she said. "But let's not put the cart before the horse here."

AI was supposed to take our jobs -- here's what the data really shows

Despite warnings about AI taking our jobs, the data tells a different story. A new report from Yale University's Budget Lab and The Brookings Institution suggests that, despite its rapid rise, AI has not yet caused widespread disruption in the labor market. Nearly three years after ChatGPT's launch, employment patterns across industries remain largely unchanged. The report, authored by economists Martha Gimbel, Molly Kinder, Joshua Kendall, and Maddie Lee, argues that although graduate hiring has slowed, this is more a result of broader market conditions rather than generative AI. The study also found no evidence of mass layoffs or job displacement directly tied to the adoption of AI. Within the report, the researchers show that while AI adoption is accelerating, workplace changes don't happen overnight. And, as history shows from past technological shifts, work is reshaped over decades, not months. HR leaders and CIOs are essentially in a wait-and-see mode; they are still determining which tools to adopt and how to restructure their operations around them. The lack of measurable productivity gains, highlighted in an MIT study showing only 5% of AI pilots are fully operational, underscores the hesitation. You can't overhaul your workforce if the tech isn't yet delivering clear results. The ripple effects are most visible in the tech sector itself. Companies building AI systems are shifting away from general computer science hires and investing heavily in specialized AI researchers. And while hiring might be slowing down elsewhere, it isn't directly attributable to AI. As of now, it appears that AI hasn't upended jobs, but it's not a matter of if -- it's when. The disruption, according to the data, will likely unfold gradually over decades. For now, the workforce is in limbo: companies are testing the waters, workers are watching and learning AI, but the true shake-up is still on the horizon.

AI isn't really moving the job market compared to bigger economic factors

Why it matters: Companies are spending big on chips, data centers and talent, but hiring weakness owes more to economic conditions and government actions than automation. * Job seekers are struggling, especially entry-level applicants, but sluggish demand, inflation and restructuring are still bigger factors. Zoom out: In the 33 months after ChatGPT's launch, researchers found no discernible disruption to the broader labor market, according to a report this week from the Budget Lab at Yale, a nonpartisan policy research center. * Yale researchers measured "occupational mix" -- the distribution of workers across occupations -- and found that it looked similar to the birth of the PC in the 1980s and the early internet in the 1990s. By the numbers: So far this year, job losses due to "technological updates" are far less than other factors, according to a report Thursday from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. * 20,219 jobs were lost as a result of "automation and possibly AI implementation" in 2025 through September, per the firm, which has tracked layoffs for decades. * Just 17,375 cuts in 2025 have been explicitly linked to AI. * In the same period the report attributed 208,227 lost jobs to "economic conditions" and another 293,753 cuts to "DOGE actions." Between the lines: The numbers reflect what current AI tools can accomplish in comparison to humans. * An OpenAI report released last month shows that today's leading models are approaching parity with human professionals on many tasks, but the results don't capture the cost of human insight required in a real-world setting. * AI's productivity gains are likely to come as a complement, not a replacement, for most workers, OpenAI chief economist Ronnie Chatterji told Axios. What they're saying: Economic leaders at the highest levels also have doubts. * Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell expressed "great uncertainty" at a recent press conference that AI is creating a lower labor demand. * "I think my view -- which is also a bit of a guess, but widely shared I think -- is that you are seeing some effects, but it's not the main thing driving it," Powell said. * "It may be that companies or other institutions that have been hiring younger people right out of college are able to use AI more than they had in the past," Powell said. "It's also part of the story, though, that ... job creation more broadly has slowed down. The economy has slowed down." What we're watching: Deploying AI to replace entry-level workers could put us in a pickle down the road, especially in a world where humans work alongside AI. * If workers can't get a foot in the door, they'll never make it up the ladder, and eventually that could mean that the bots outsmart us. * "You cannot supervise an intern if you are less skilled than the intern," Stanford computer science professor Jure Leskovec told Axios. The bottom line: So far, changes are incremental, not catastrophic.

AI might not actually be killing off jobs like we thought - but many businesses are still wary about agents

Despite the hype, many IT leaders are avoiding fully autonomous agents and are sticking to supervised AI deployments, new research has claimed. Research from Gartner found only 15% are considering, piloting or deploying fully autonomous agents, compared with around 75% for all AI agent types. Early concerns AI could replace human workers seem to have been more or less negated, with only 7% strongly agreeing that agentic AI will replace humans in the next two to four years. Nearly twice as many (12%) see them replacing workplace applications instead, indicative of a new way of working and interacting with data. However, in an increasingly connected world where we hear of new cyberattacks on a daily basis, three-quarters (74%) noted concerns that AI just provides a new attack vector. Half (53%) also said that, although significant productivity gains could be unlocked, they don't expect truly transformative gains. Worker concerns around job security aren't unwarranted, though. Lufthansa and Salesforce have both committed to cutting around 4,000 workers each due to AI, but a separate Yale study challenges the narrative and claims the evidence actually suggest these headcount reductions are more of a cost control issue. "Overall, our metrics indicate that the broader labor market has not experienced a discernible disruption since ChatGPT's release," Yale's researchers conclude. The study did acknowledge previous technological disruptions occurred over decades, but AI has shortened that to "months or years," which has amplified change and thus unease among workers. Still, "no substantial acceleration in the rate of change in the composition of the labor market" has been since since OpenAI publicly launched ChatGPT, and the 1940s and 1950s still hold the record for the fastest changes. On the whole, Yale called job anxiety "speculative" and lacking in any compelling evidence, noting that AI's effects on labor will be no different to previous technological and industrial changes.

US jobs market yet to be seriously disrupted by AI, finds Yale study

Report say changes to occupational mix since release of ChatGPT in 2022 'sluggish' compared with 1940s and 50s The US jobs market has yet to experience serious disruption from breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, according to an academic study. Analysis by Yale University's Budget Lab found there had been no "discernible disruption" since ChatGPT's release in November 2022. Researchers said its conclusion was not surprising because historical trends pointed to technological upheaval in workforces taking place over decades rather than months or years. "Computers didn't become commonplace in offices until nearly a decade after their release to the public, and it took even longer for them to transform office workflows," said the study. "Even if new AI technologies will go on to impact the labor market as much, or more, dramatically, it is reasonable to expect that widespread effects will take longer than 33 months to materialise." The study said changes in the occupational mix in the US - a measure of what sort of jobs people do in the world's biggest economy and whether fewer people are in certain types of occupations - were well under way during 2021 and more recent changes did not seem any more pronounced. It added that the changes were "sluggish" compared with the 1940s and 50s when the jobs market underwent upheaval related to the second world war and other seismic events. A key concern about the rise of generative artificial intelligence is that it will lead to AI tools taking over tasks carried out by humans in certain sectors, effectively making their jobs redundant and triggering widespread job losses. In May, the chief executive of the AI company Anthropic, Dario Amodei, warned that the technology could wipe out half of all entry-level office jobs in the next five years. Sectors most likely to be affected by tools such as ChatGPT includee newspapers, film-making and business services like accountancy. These were already showing changes in occupational mix before the release of the groundbreaking chatbot, said the report. The analysis by economists at the Budget Lab and the Brookings Institute, a thinktank, said the US jobs mix indicated there was "no substantial acceleration in the rate of change in the composition of the labour market since the introduction of ChatGPT". However, the report flagged some recent data that showed a divergence between the jobs mix for recent graduates and older graduates aged 25-34. It said the data could show AI impacting employment for early career workers but could also reflect a slowing jobs market. "While anxiety over the effects of AI on today's labour market is widespread, our data suggests it remains largely speculative," said the report. "The picture of AI's impact on the llabour market that emerges from our data is one that largely reflects stability, not major disruption at an economy-wide level."

New Yale Study Finds AI Has Had Essentially Zero Impact on Jobs

Ever since OpenAI's ChatGPT was introduced in November 2022, experts and executives have been predicting that it and other AI models will eliminate untold jobs -- forecasts that seem, at a first glance, to have been borne out by the plethora of tech sector layoffs in the wake of its debut. But a new study from Yale University found quite the opposite in the United States, which should give anxious workers some relief as it goes against the hyped up prognostications of many tech CEOs. "While anxiety over the effects of AI on today's labor market is widespread, our data suggests it remains largely speculative," reads the study from Yale's Budget Lab, a policy research center on economics. The research team analyzed job data from the past 33 months since ChatGPT was released, the employment status of college graduates, and how exposed various groups of workers are to AI tech, among other questions. In one analysis, they compared three different groups of workers who have varying levels of exposure to AI technology -- high, middle or low -- and tracked any changes in their share of the workforce since ChatGPT went public. If AI is having any impact at all, you'd expect a decrease in the high and middle exposure groups, but that simply wasn't the case. In fact, the percentage in each category hasn't budged much, suggesting that AI is essentially a non-factor, at least so far. In another analysis, the Yale team looked at the rate of change in the composition of the American labor force and compared that data to two separate time periods: when computers started gaining wider usage circa 1984 and the explosion in internet entrepreneurship beginning around 1996. The idea was to measure whether AI is transforming the workforce in a historically resonant way. Surprisingly, they found that the rate of change in the labor market's makeup in the wake of AI closely matches the pace when computers and the internet were first taking off. In other words, AI doesn't appear to be more disruptive than those two technologies -- at least so far -- despite heavy hitters like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei saying that AI will cause massive upheaval in the world and that entire sectors of jobs will be lost forever. In an analysis of college graduates, the Yale researchers compared the occupational mix -- the spread of workers across different jobs in the labor market, essentially -- of young adults ages 20 to 24 years old, and compared them to older workers ages 25 to 34. Starting from the time they graduate from college, they found the occupational mix for both the younger and older cohort match closely. This suggests that AI isn't having much of an impact on recent college graduates if you compare them to the older group at a similar period of their lives; however, the last several months shows a deviation in this pattern -- of about six percentage points -- that could be due to our current not-so-hot job market. (Or, just maybe, it's showing that AI is starting to affect the labor market.) "The picture of AI's impact on the labor market that emerges from our data is one that largely reflects stability, not major disruption at an economy-wide level," the study reads. But what explains the depressing job market -- most starkly illustrated in a viral chart on X, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing the number of position openings cratering since ChatGPT was released? And what about early career jobs, which seem scarce these days, to the chagrin of recent graduates? Some think that the softening in the job market should instead be attributed to the US Federal Reserve putting a kibosh to the era of zero interest-rate policy in 2022. Before it ended, companies borrowed massive amounts of capital at cheap rates and plowed them into high-risk startups -- thereby inflating assets, making lots of millionaires, and fueling a gold rush of well-paying tech positions. (Squint at that chart in the previous paragraph and it does seem to support this thesis, with the decline in openings coinciding more cleanly with the interest rate hike than the release of ChatGPT.) As for early career positions decreasing, some experts think the phenomenon predates ChatGPT and could be a sign that there are simply more college graduates than there are early career jobs where a higher degree is a must, along with other structural changes. And there are the headlines, which are littered with stories of people getting laid off due to AI -- but maybe that's a function of some CEOs jumping the gun and buying into the hype even though AI still leaves much to be desired in practice. That's reflected in the uneven adoption of AI across industrial sectors. "While generative AI looks likely to join the ranks of transformative, general purpose technologies," the Yale study reads, "It is too soon to tell how disruptive the technology will be to jobs."

The Gen Z hiring nightmare is real, but AI is a 'lightning strike' not a 'house fire,' Yale economist says | Fortune

Ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in November 2022, predictions of an AI-fueled jobs apocalypse have dominated headlines -- some studies blame the technology for drying up entry-level roles, while others warn it will eventually replace all of us. Especially alarming to many has been AI's effect on entry-level jobs. A blockbuster Stanford study in August was especially rattling, as it claimed to find a "significant and disproportionate impact" on entry-level jobs most exposed to AI automation -- like software development and customer service -- have seen steep relative declines in employment. This came out close to the MIT study that said 95% of generative AI pilots were failing and the somewhat sudden realization that AI could be building toward a bubble. Even Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sees something going on, commenting that "kids coming out of college and younger people, minorities, are having a hard time finding jobs." But according to a new study from Yale and Brookings researchers, these instances are "lightning strikes," as opposed to "house fires,". The U.S. labor market just isn't showing any signs of broad, AI-driven disruption, at least not yet. Martha Gimbel, a Yale economist and the paper's lead author, hopes that understanding this data helps people to relax. "Take a step back. Take a deep breath," Martha Gimbel, a Yale economist and the paper's lead author, told Fortune. "Try to respond to AI with data, not emotion." The new study examined multiple measures of labor market disruption, drawing on Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on job losses, spells of unemployment, and shifts in broader occupational composition. The conclusion: there's movement, but nothing out of the ordinary. While the mix of occupations has shifted slightly in the past years, the authors stress that this change is still well within historical norms. Right now, the forces driving those shifts appear to be macroeconomic rather than technological. "The biggest forces hitting the labor market right now are a slowing economy, an aging population, and a decline in immigration -- not AI," Gimbel said. It's easy to conflate noise in the economy with the impact of AI, particularly for younger workers, who may already be feeling the pinch from a cooling job market. But Gimbel stressed that these effects are "very specific impacts in very targeted populations," but there aren't any broad impacts of AI for young workers, which are more consistent with a macroeconomic slowdown. Economists -- including Fed Chair Jerome Powell -- have described the current labor market conditions as a "low hire, low-fire" environment, where layoffs are rare, but so are new opportunities. Recent college graduates have been taking the hit: they are struggling to find entry-level roles in white-collar sectors like tech and professional services, and the youth unemployment rate has climbed to 10.5%, the highest since 2016. But the effect has hit older workers, too, more than a quarter of unemployed Americans have been out of work for over six months, the highest since the mid-2010s outside of the pandemic years. It's not surprising, then, that many workers assume AI must already be responsible. But Gimbel argues one of the biggest misconceptions is conflating exposure to AI with displacement. Radiologists illustrate the point. Once seen as automation's prime victims, they are more numerous and better paid than ever, even as their workflows rely heavily on AI-powered imaging tools. "Exposure to AI doesn't mean your job disappears," she said. "It might mean your work changes." The same applies to coders and writers, who dominate AI adoption rates on platforms like Claude, the researchers found. Using the tools doesn't automatically train away your livelihood -- it could simply reshape how the work is done. Molly Kinder, Gimbel's co-author at Brookings, added another layer: geography. Americans are used to thinking about automation as something that devastates factory towns in the heartland. With generative AI, Kinder said, the geography is flipped. "This is not your grandparents' automation," Kinder told Fortune. "GenAI is more likely to disrupt -- positively or negatively -- big cities with clusters of knowledge and tech jobs, not the industrial heartland." In her view, cities like San Francisco, Boston, and New York, dense with coders, analysts, researchers, and creatives, are far more exposed to generative AI than smaller towns. But whether that exposure turns into devastation or growth depends on the future. "If humans remain in the loop, those cities could reap the most benefits," Kinder said. "If not, they'll feel the worst pain." The key, she emphasizes, is that exposure doesn't tell us whether jobs will actually be eliminated, rather, it only tells us which tasks could change. The real story will depend on whether companies treat AI as a helper or as a replacement. Kinder, like Gibbel, stressed that diffusion takes time. Even as AI systems improve quickly, most organizations haven't redesigned their workflows around them. "Even though it feels like AI is getting so good, turning that into change in the workplace is time-consuming," she said. "It's messy. It's uneven." That's why the Yale-Brookings analysis is deliberately broad. "It can tell if the house is on fire," Kinder explained. "It can't pick up a stove fire in the kitchen. And right now, the labor market as a house is not on fire." That doesn't mean there's nothing to see here, however. Kinder called today's changes, like the ones the Stanford study picked up, "lightning strikes" in specific industries like software development, customer service, and creative work. These early jolts serve as canaries in the coal mine. But they haven't aggregated into the kind of disruption that reshapes official job statistics. "Our paper does not say there's been no impact," she said. "A translator might be out of work, a creative might be struggling, a customer service rep might be displaced. Those are real. But it's not big enough to add up to the economy-wide apocalypse people imagine." Both Kinder and Gimbel said they expect the first clear, systemic effects to take years, not months, to appear. If and when real displacement arrives, both authors believe it will come from embedded AI in enterprise workflows, not from individual workers casually using chatbots. "That's when you'll see displacement," Kinder said. "Not when one worker turns to a chatbot, but when the business redesigns the workflow with AI." That process is beginning, as more companies integrate AI APIs into core systems. But organizational change is slow. "Three years is nothing for a general-purpose technology," Kinder said. "GenAI has not defied gravity. It takes time to redesign workflows, and it takes time to diffuse across workplaces. It could end up being phenomenally transformative, but it's not happening overnight."

No, AI Isn't Actually Stealing Jobs, Says a New Yale Study

There have been a lot of terrifying headlines when it comes to artificial intelligence. Some reports say AI is preventing young people from gaining jobs. Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei has declared that AI could wipe out more than half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio even warned the technology could lead to human extinction. Finally, though, there's some good news. A new study from economists at the Yale University Budget Lab and the Brookings Institution, a prominent think-tank, says the doomsayers are wrong -- and there is, as yet, very little evidence that AI is putting people out of work. "While the occupational mix is changing more quickly than it has in the past, it is not a large difference and predates the widespread introduction of AI in the workforce," the report reads. "Currently, measures of exposure, automation, and augmentation show no sign of being related to changes in employment or unemployment." The report looks at the labor market since OpenAI's ChatGPT made its debut 33 months ago. So far, say the researchers, the metrics have not shown any discernible disruption in that time. That might run counter to the chatter, but the team behind the study says the finding is really not surprising at all. "Historically, widespread technological disruption in workplaces tends to occur over decades, rather than months or years," the report reads. "Computers didn't become commonplace in offices until nearly a decade after their release to the public, and it took even longer for them to transform office workflows. Even if new AI technologies will go on to impact the labor market as much, or more, dramatically, it is reasonable to expect that widespread effects will take longer than 33 months to materialize." As for those claims that AI is the reason recent graduates can't find work? So far, the data doesn't support those either. Researchers looked at jobless rates between older and more recent grads. Those who just exited school are finding it a bit harder to secure a job, but the report says if AI were to blame, the difference between the two would be much larger. While cautioning that the sample size needs to be larger before any firm conclusions are made, it indicates the overall labor market could bear the blame for the challenges in finding a job instead of AI. Several fields that have been predicted to feel the impact of AI, as well, have emerged much more unscathed than people have warned. Office and administrative support jobs and computer and mathematical positions, two of the most frequently said to be at risk, have only seen minor disruptions. The same goes for management and sales positions. That's not to say, however, that AI won't eventually have a negative impact on the job market. Like other technologies, AI is likely to evolve in the coming years. Current analysis, including this study, researchers warn, is not predictive. As a result, Yale and the Brookings Institution plan to update the data on a monthly basis, to keep a look out for future AI disruption "While anxiety over the effects of AI on today's labor market is widespread, our data suggests it remains largely speculative," the report reads. "The picture of AI's impact on the labor market that emerges from our data is one that largely reflects stability, not major disruption at an economy-wide level. While generative AI looks likely to join the ranks of transformative, general purpose technologies, it is too soon to tell how disruptive the technology will be to jobs."

AI didn't steal your job, then who did? Yale study busts the myth of the great automation apocalypse: 'Speculation, not disruption'

A new study by Yale University's Budget Lab challenges fears of AI-driven mass unemployment, finding little evidence that artificial intelligence has significantly disrupted the U.S. job market since ChatGPT's launch in 2022. Researchers compared workforce data across industries and generations, concluding that employment trends remain largely stable. The report suggests that economic factors, not automation, are driving recent job slowdowns -- calling the AI job loss panic "largely speculative."