AI's impact on the job market is starting to show up in the data

The impact of AI on the job market is starting to show up in the data analyzed by Wall Street firms—so far it's pretty modest, but certainly real. Goldman Sachs looked at occupation-level federal data and scored jobs by AI exposure: separating roles that can be completely substituted by AI (proofreader) and those that can be considered complementary (doctor). They found that AI has both created and destroyed jobs over the past year. It reduced employment in occupations that are easily substituted by AI, translating to a slight 0.16 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. At the same time, AI decreased unemployment by 0.06 point in jobs that are "augmented" by AI—roles that rely on things that machines cannot replace, like human judgment, interpersonal interaction, and accountability. Overall, AI raised the unemployment rate by just 0.1 percentage point, they find. Morgan Stanley did a similar analysis—separating jobs by AI exposure. They come to a similar conclusion: AI added 10 basis points to the overall unemployment rate at most. That's just 0.1 percentage point.