It’s easy for job seekers to feel stuck in an AI doom loop.
Chatbots have overhauled white-collar 9-to-5s, agents are rewriting the rules for basic tasks, and C-Suite leaders can’t stop talking about productivity gains. If you’re struggling to land a new role right now, however, new research found that technology likely isn’t the main culprit.
An analysis by Yale Budget Lab found that AI has had a modest impact on America’s job market since the release of ChatGPT in 2022. So far, AI has changed jobs more than it has eliminated them, the researchers said — a pattern similar to the impact of other major advances, such as the internet and computers.
Yale’s team put it bluntly: AI usage has “no connection” to changes in employment or unemployment.
AI is changing work, but not eliminating it
While it may not be obliterating jobs just yet, AI has undoubtedly changed the nature of those jobs. Business Insider has heard from Americans without a tech background who vibecoded solutions to their biggest problems, and business leaders who are using chatbots to streamline their workflow.
A solid benchmark for AI’s actual impact on jobs, Yale’s researchers found, is to compare it with other tech advances, such as the introduction of computers in the 1980s and the dawn of the internet in the 1990s. AI’s effect is slightly sharper in the months after launching, but not the work revolution some Silicon Valley leaders have heralded.
Some sectors have been hit harder than others. Finance and business are more vulnerable than a profession like nursing. Occupational churn, which measures growth and decline in the job market, however, is following a similar trend line to these other moments in tech history — not causing a massive reset.
The Yale report also found that high AI exposure doesn’t have a stark impact on how long job seekers are unemployed — those who have been out of work for less than 5 weeks have a relatively similar trend line to those who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more. The number of unemployed workers whose jobs were automated is also fairly static.
It’s not to say that the job market is rosy. A lack of vacancies, widespread hiring freezes, and layoffs — which some CEOs say are somewhat related to AI — have boxed people of all ages out of offices. And relatively low quit rates mean that open positions have been few and far between. Jobs numbers are recovering a bit this summer after months of disappointing results, though that dip may have had more to do with high interest rates than tech disruption.
Giants like OpenAI and Anthropic are also reevaluating how they price their products, meaning companies will have to shell out a lot more money if they want their employees to use AI regularly. And, as Business Insider has reported, much of the current AI use in the corporate world isn’t translating to major profits or productivity gains.
It’s still early days for chatbots at the office, and the tech is evolving rapidly. But, at least for now, it’s unlikely to cause a sudden wave of unemployment.
