Yale Study Finds AI Has Not Significantly Impacted US Job 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."

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."