AI Hasn’t Caused Job Losses, Researchers Find

The U.S. labor market is cooling, but one potential culprit can be ruled out: artificial intelligence (AI) does not appear to be causing a slowdown in hiring across the U.S. economy — at least not yet, Walter Frick reported for Bloomberg Weekend.

Across measures and metrics, the authors concluded they did not “see any meaningful AI impacts in the labor market.”

U.S. workers whose jobs involve tasks that AI can perform are actually much less likely than other workers to be unemployed, according to an analysis released today by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a think tank.

They’re also much less likely to be leaving the labor force.

“The evidence that we have so far about the level of diffusion and the actual application of AI in the labor market suggests that these more recent movements [in U.S. jobs data] are not going to be related to AI,” said Nathan Goldschlag, EIG’s director of research.

The report looked at multiple measures of AI “exposure” — generally, the share of a job’s tasks that AI could do — and compared more- and less-exposed workers across a range of labor market outcomes, including exiting the workforce and switching occupations.

Across measures and metrics, the authors concluded they did not “see any meaningful AI impacts in the labor market.”

Economists at the Yale Budget Lab are also studying the issue, and so far their analysis is likewise “showing no overall effects” of AI on the U.S. labor market, said Martha Gimbel, the lab’s executive director.