GoKawiilAdvances in AI models have sparked fears that rapid disruption of labor markets is imminent, if not already underway. A steady drumbeat of media articles has forecast a grim future for white-collar work due to AI.[1] Fears of an “AI jobs apocalypse” are often amplified by AI leaders themselves. For example, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has predicted that AI could wipe out half of white-collar jobs and push unemployment to 20 percent. A labor market upheaval of this magnitude would cause enormous suffering for many households and pose a significant challenge for policymakers.
While the public has been debating AI’s potential impact on firms and their workers, research and data have been catching up. Our goal in this brief is to synthesize the fast-growing body of research on AI’s impact for policymakers and others eager to understand how AI is affecting the labor market right now. For ease of exposition, we organize this empirical evidence into a set of stylized facts, as follows:
AI’s impact on aggregate employment is likely small right now. A tough market for recent graduates may be partly due to AI. AI’s impact on worker productivity is mixed but generally positive. Firm adoption has accelerated but unevenly across the economy. xEarly evidence is hardly the last word on AI’s impacts.
We will now explore each of these points in greater depth.
AI’s impact on labor market conditions is likely small right now.
No one can predict the future, but there is little evidence that AI is causing significant job losses right now. Unemployment among workers in occupations most exposed to AI-driven disruption is rising, but not faster than among those least exposed.[2] As shown in Figure 1, the unemployment rate for the top quintile of AI-exposed workers has risen by 0.77 percentage points since 2022, while the unemployment rate for the least-exposed workers rose slightly more, by 0.85 percentage points over the same period. These aggregate trends suggest a broadly softening labor market, rather than one characterized by AI-driven job losses.
Figure 1: Unemployment rate by AI-exposure quintile, 2015-2026 (quarterly)
Source: IPUMS-CPS data. Updates and extends Eckhardt and Goldschlag (2025) using replication code.
Note: AI exposure from Felten, Raj, and Seamans (2021).[3] Quintile 1 = least exposed, 5 = most exposed; dashed line is the U.S. total.
There is also little evidence of AI depressing employment or job postings in the most highly exposed occupations. Employment trends in occupations with high exposure to AI are fairly stable.[4] While employment growth in coding-heavy occupations has slowed somewhat, it remains positive.[5] There is no evidence that AI adoption has negatively impacted firms’ job postings.[6] Indeed, online job postings for software developers — a very highly exposed occupation — have been growing faster than for other occupations over the last year.[7] Among firms that adopted enterprise AI, employment grew by 10 percent in the two years following adoption, an effect driven by firms with the highest per capita AI spending.[8]
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