Erik Brynjolfsson

“Overall, we do not find widespread job displacement in occupations most exposed to generative AI. However, employment has declined substantially for early-career workers in the occupations most exposed to AI, including but not limited to software development and customer support.”

“Employment of young workers in AI-exposed jobs now stands 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with that of their less-exposed peers; experienced workers show no comparable gap.”

“Separation rates fell for both groups and, among young workers, fell at least as much in the most exposed occupations as in the least exposed, the opposite of what displacement would imply. The divergence instead reflects hiring, with the gap in hiring rates between more- and less-exposed young workers opening after 2022.”

“Declines are concentrated in occupations where AI usage primarily substitutes for human tasks; where usage primarily complements workers, employment is flat or rising, especially for experienced workers.”

“These patterns attenuate when controlling for education, show some divergent trends predating generative AI, and are more pronounced in the ADP analysis sample than in national survey benchmarks, with some evidence of consistent patterns in government administrative data. We interpret these facts as early, descriptive indicators—canaries in the coal mine—rather than causal estimates”

“Access to AI assistance increases worker productivity, as measured by issues resolved per hour, by 15% on average, with substantial heterogeneity across workers.”

“Less experienced and lower-skilled workers improve both the speed and quality of their output while the most experienced and highest-skilled workers see small gains in speed and small declines in quality.”

“We emphasize, however, that these findings capture medium run impacts within a single firm: our paper is not designed to shed light on the aggregate employment or wage effects of generative AI tools.”

“If customer demand for assistance is inelastic, then the productivity gains we document will likely translate into less demand for human labor. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests the firm could field the same number of customer support issues with 12% fewer worker-hours.”

“First, we note again that our findings apply for a particular AI tool, used in a single firm, within a single occupation, and should not be generalized across all occupations and AI systems.”