If you suspected that AI is taking jobs away from young workers, there is now data to back this up.
Three economists at Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab —professor Erik Brynjolfsson, research scientist Ruyu Chen, and postdoctoral fellow Bharat Chandar— published a paper on Tuesday that found early-career workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed jobs “have experienced a 13 percent relative decline in employment.”
“In contrast, employment for workers in less exposed fields and more experienced workers in the same occupations has remained stable or continued to grow,” the researchers wrote.
In fact, for occupations that can’t easily be replaced by AI, like home health aides, employment opportunities for younger workers seemed to be growing faster than for older workers.
The effect was visible even when accounting for firm-specific shocks and other potential causes like changes to remote work policies, the effects of the pandemic on the education system, slowdown in tech hiring, or cyclical employment trends, the researchers noted.
“The AI revolution is beginning to have a significant and disproportionate impact on entry-level workers in the American labor market,” the researchers claim.
The findings are backed up by anecdotal evidence that has been piling up for months.
CEOs across industries have been open about their expectations—and their corporate policies already in action—to have artificial intelligence handle the work that some new employees would have otherwise.
“There is a real fear that I have that an entire cohort, those graduating during the early AI transition, may kind of be a lost generation, unless policy, education, and hiring norms adjust,” John McCarthy, associate professor of global labor and work at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told Gizmodo earlier this month.
But while some experts had been sounding the alarms, others had been hesitant to point the finger at AI without tangible data.
... continue reading