AI is Not Killing Jobs, Finds New US Study
- Reference: 0179609644
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/01/0434257/ai-is-not-killing-jobs-finds-new-us-study
- Source link:
> Research from economists at the Yale University Budget Lab and the Brookings Institution think-tank indicates that, since OpenAI launched its popular chatbot in November 2022, generative AI has not had a more dramatic effect on employment than earlier technological breakthroughs.
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> The [2]research , based on an analysis of official data on the labour market and figures from the tech industry on usage and exposure to AI, also finds little evidence that the tools are putting people out of work. The study follows widespread concern that generative AI will spark job losses -- and even the disappearance of certain types of work -- amid a US labour market that has recently weakened.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/c9f905a0-cbfc-4a0a-ac4f-0d68d0fc64aa
[2] https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/evaluating-impact-ai-labor-market-current-state-affairs
Wait (Score:5, Interesting)
The story directly before this one is about Lufthansa (not a US company, obviously) cutting 4,000 jobs and leaning on AI's efficiency gains to fill that hole. It feels like we aren't getting the whole picture here.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, note that it says 'big' and 'compared to other technological breakthroughs'.
So even if they see small, or corresponding with hiring, or even big but they think it can be correlated with macroeconomic conditions that would have prevailed even without AI, they can kind of wave it away.
About the only thing they can say is that it hasn't been so extreme as to completely eliminate whole categories of the workforce. The data is too noisy in general, and as companies claim to layoff thanks to AI, it's hard t
Re: (Score:2)
> The story directly before this one is about Lufthansa (not a US company, obviously) cutting 4,000 jobs and leaning on AI's efficiency gains to fill that hole. It feels like we aren't getting the whole picture here.
Yep.
Businesses: "We're laying off a bunch of people to replace them with AI"
Yale: "AI has no effect on jobs"
Reference yesterday's post about distrust of elite universities. The whole thing got bogged down into a stupid slapfest about politics, but perhaps the biggest driver of that loss of trust is right here: the perception that academics live with their heads in the clouds, out in Theory World , while reality is much different.
Re: (Score:2)
Business honking on about laying off a bunch of people seems to me to be they are promising to lay off a bunch of people. Those promises could also just be management's latest attempt to put pressure on salaries. Currently, job layoffs are not great. Job hiring is what sucks. You are over your skis.
Re: (Score:2)
> Business honking on about laying off a bunch of people seems to me to be they are promising to lay off a bunch of people. Those promises could also just be management's latest attempt to put pressure on salaries. Currently, job layoffs are not great. Job hiring is what sucks. You are over your skis.
[1]Accenture Makes Room for AI With Thousands of Layoffs [tech.co]
[2]Salesforce CEO confirms 4,000 job cuts ‘because I need less heads' with AI [nbcbayarea.com]
[3]Glassdoor and Indeed announce layoffs, reportedly due to AI [hrdive.com]
[4]AI-driven job cuts may be underreported [cfodive.com]
[5]Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says company will cut jobs amid AI boom. It's already happening at Microsoft. [yahoo.com]
A cursory Google search in the News column will give you an endless line of links.
You can say "Tis but a flesh wound!" if you like, but I see limbs being hacked off.
[1] https://tech.co/news/accenture-layoffs-ai-pivot
[2] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/salesforce-layoffs-artificial-intelligence/3941975
[3] https://www.hrdive.com/news/layoffs-glassdoor-indeed-ai-headwinds/752876
[4] https://www.cfodive.com/news/ai-driven-job-cuts-underreported-challenger/752418
[5] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-says-company-will-cut-jobs-amid-ai-boom-its-already-happening-at-microsoft-213847151.html
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you believe them?
I think they're rebranding their business problems as the progressive adoption of a hip emerging tech. Everyone else is doing it.
Re: (Score:3)
And before that we saw stories of mass layoffs in Microsoft and Meta and other tech companies due to AI.
Even if it's not killing jobs now, there is no reason to believe it won't kill them later with better models.
Re: (Score:2)
And other companies have been caught lying about AI efficiencies as a cover for moving work to 'low cost countries'. Just because they're saying it's because of AI doesn't mean it's actually because of AI.
Re: (Score:2)
> The story directly before this one is about Lufthansa (not a US company, obviously) cutting 4,000 jobs and leaning on AI's efficiency gains to fill that hole. It feels like we aren't getting the whole picture here.
AI is merely a politically advantageous excuse for layoffs. It shows they are doing more with less which is a more agreeable image than either their company is going to shit or they are seeking to maximize profit by cutting corners.
Everyone now uses AI as their go-to excuse for layoffs.
Re: (Score:1)
You're getting the picture that generates the most clicks, that is all. That's all it ever is.
Re: (Score:2)
> The story directly before this one is about Lufthansa (not a US company, obviously) cutting 4,000 jobs and leaning on AI's efficiency gains to fill that hole. It feels like we aren't getting the whole picture here.
I think the thing you're missing is that Lufthansa's leadership is delusional and still hopes that a computer will replace the people, whereas people who have studied AI and used it realise that this isn't the case.
No penalty for lying because nobody checking (Score:2)
Nobody verifies if a company is simply shrinking or really are outsourcing to bots. Companies are tempted to point to bots rather than admit sales are slumping so that their stock price stays high. If the SEC doesn't bother to look into this, who will?
Re: (Score:2)
You totally fail to understand how jobs work. Jobs are not created by rich people. They always existed. When someone fires people, that frees up people to do other jobs.
Jobs are created by human desires. Mostly greed and laziness, but lust, anger, revenge, etc. also pop up (just look at movies).
I want wine. (winemaker)
I want someone to open my wine and pour it for me. (Waiter)
I want someone to pick my wine for me. (Sommelier)
I want someone to deliver my wine to me. (https://www.astorwines.com/)
I want t
So link to the study, not FT (Score:2)
1) This slashvertisement links to a paywalled article.
2) Whether "generative AI has not had a more dramatic effect on employment than earlier technological breakthroughs" or it has is irrelevant. Earlier technological breakthroughs put thousands of people out of work, too.
3) "The research, based on an analysis of official data on the labour market and figures from the tech industry on usage and exposure to AI" is therefore nonsense because the official data on the labor market is fudged and the figures from
Anecdote (Score:2)
I have started noticing obviously AI generated responses to support tickets, some of which actually do have helpful information in them and allow me to close the ticket without ever having to talk to a person. So, it makes me wonder what that L1 person is actually doing or whether or not they still are employed at all.
Re: (Score:2)
> I have started noticing obviously AI generated responses to support tickets, some of which actually do have helpful information in them and allow me to close the ticket without ever having to talk to a person. So, it makes me wonder what that L1 person is actually doing or whether or not they still are employed at all.
I've made three purchases online this week, one of them large, and in every instance, an AI chatbot with "Powered by AI" was the purchase support. If you hated Clippy, you're really going to hate first level support going forward.
Re: (Score:2)
L1 tech support is usually too incompetent (for one reason and/or another) to solve problems, and is there mostly to filter out the non-problems caused by obvious customer error. The real action doesn't usually occur until you get up to the next level. The primary exception is where there is no next level and they're all useless.
Re: (Score:2)
If I call someplace and get a voicechat-bot thing... I just tell it I want to talk to a representative (or a human... some will respond to 'human' more than representative).
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, the tech guy you'll get at first is just a script-reader.
Used to have Charter for an ISP (they suck... avoid if possible), and the modem we had was flaky (sitting on a carpeted floor, it'd drop connection all the time... eventually, I hooked one of those black binder clips to the coax and hung it from another power cord, and it worked fine)... I had to call Charter's support enough that the tech guy gave me the direct number to their tech room. Eventually, I figured out the binder clip thing, and
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Is that really any different from an advanced FAQ, though?
Re: (Score:2)
> I have started noticing obviously AI generated responses to support tickets, some of which actually do have helpful information in them and allow me to close the ticket without ever having to talk to a person. So, it makes me wonder what that L1 person is actually doing or whether or not they still are employed at all.
I am more concerned about where the L2 and L3 support people are going to come from as we replace the L1 folks with AI. Same thing for developers and all other industries - if we replace entry level positions with AI, we won't have entry level people to train up or to gain experience on their own to have skills beyond entry level. I am concerned that AI is doing to seriously damage our talent pipeline.
The knife handle is not killing jobs (Score:2)
Its simple deflection, the chatbot front end toy may not be doing he job taking, but everything connected to it is.
This just in (Score:2)
Synth journalist says synths are nothing to worry about.
Perhaps AI is the new outsourcing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think maybe it's not having a heavy impact on US jobs because a lot of the jobs it's replacing were already outsourced. I believe there was a recent article indicating it was already having a significant impact in India.
What's hilarious to me... (Score:2)
Is that on slashdot, the article I see below this one is
"Lufthansa To Cut 4,000 Jobs As Airline Turns To AI To Boost Efficiency"
Yet, the story right benath this one... (Score:2)
Yet, the story right beneath this one says 4000 Lufthansa layoffs coming because of Ai,
Pick a narrative and stick with it... or is /. posting stories from any whackadoo with cash?
[1]https://i.imgur.com/CjOhBC1.jp... [imgur.com]
[1] https://i.imgur.com/CjOhBC1.jpeg
Productivity was already low (Score:2)
Companies have been underproductive for years. Even to the point of outsourcing customer service and completely ruining that experience. The truth is, even "fully staffed" companies can't seem to afford to do basic things to take care of themselves. This is probably more to do with incompetence than anything else. But population growth has stalled out and there are fewer people available to work and higher wage requirements. So far AI is filling a need that isn't already being met.
Keep in mind this is only at the national level (Score:2)
Basically it means that when you get fired from your customer service job because of AI there is technically still another job out there.
That job is either lower pay or higher skill but technically the job is there.
There is still a loss of jobs it's just not enough that the kind of Milton Friedman loving economist that dominates popular economic theory today cares.
That doesn't help you when you get laid off and it won't help you when the marginal decrease in the number of jobs has the same margi
Headline vs Summary (Score:2)
Headline: "AI is Not Killing Jobs, Finds New US Study"
Summary: "AI has not had a more dramatic effect on employment than earlier technological breakthroughs."
The Headline only matches the Summary if no earlier technological breakthroughs caused job losses.
I find that hard to believe.
Neo-Luddites (Score:2)
The [1]Luddites [wikipedia.org] protested because they didn't own the textile factories they worked in, and so were easily made irrelevant and cast away as more automation took place (they were not anti-progress or anti-techology per se !). Similarly, whether or not AI kills jobs depends on who has ownership of the AI. If the workers and labor classes were to "own" AI, then those same workers could do their jobs more easily, keeping their jobs with more free time and a higher quality of life. If the management or ownership cla
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
Paywall link contradicts 13% decline for young wor (Score:2)
workers. 'AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers, Stanford study reveals' published late August, 2025.
The study revealed that workers between the ages of 22 and 25 have experienced a 13% relative decline in employment since 2022, in occupations most exposed to AI. Some examples of these highly exposed jobs include customer service representatives, accountants and software developers. According to the study, the findings help explain why national employment growth for young workers
AI is not killing jobs (Score:2)
CEOs are planning layoffs under the guise of AI layoffs. It's a lot easier to do a layoff when a computer is going to "take your job" then if they need to make numbers add up and increase revenue. The result will be the same from layoffs, less productivity and less quality. Right now the tech industry is slicing up middle management positions, well see in a a few years if that really pays off.
Just means it is not nearly as good as advertized (Score:2)
Color me completely unsurprised about that. Caveat emptor.
This makes AI an additional expense? (Score:2)
If we take this as fact, then it sounds like this makes AI an additional expense for companies. This means they will have to weigh if there is an increase in quality of output, and if that is worth the additional expense.
Re: (Score:3)
> This means they will have to weigh if there is an increase in quality of output, and if that is worth the additional expense.
Computers are an extra expense that increase productivity, and they don't result in mass layoffs. This is getting measured all the time with ROI by financial analysts with most companies. I think most (not all) software devs are using AI and feeling more productive, though its definitely hard to measure actual ROI on a tool like this... Whether your typical office worker feels that way remains to be seen, though the 'quality' of powerpoints and emails has gone up, if you consider AI email drek quality, whic
Re: (Score:2)
>> This means they will have to weigh if there is an increase in quality of output, and if that is worth the additional expense.
> Computers are an extra expense that increase productivity, and they don't result in mass layoffs.
I guess it wasn't an "all at once bloodbath", but typists, mail/filing clerks, and switchboard operator jobs were largely killed by computers. I'd guess it'll be the same for "AI". Plus, it still needs more development before it'll become a real job killer.
> though the 'quality' of powerpoints and emails has gone up, if you consider AI email drek quality, which it seems most managers and execs do.
Heh, for sure. I wonder if AI will start sending other AI pointless HR emails. What would the AI version of sending cat videos be?
Re: (Score:2)
AI will not reduce developer workload. It will not create more measurable output. The time savings is in requirements gathering, as now people can be even more lazy and the requirements even more incorrect because that much easier to look at a finished product, provide feedback, and vibe code it instead of actually figuring out precisely what you want ahead of time. Does anyone even gather metrics for requirements gathering?
Re: (Score:2)
And consequently, we must attribute the current weakening of the job market to other factors.
Investment not expense (Score:2)
And remember they don't pay taxes on investment. Although they did lose one of the major tax benefits for those investments and it's one of the reasons the tech economy is hurting. Yet another thing you can thank the Republican party for by the way... It was one of the tax breaks they eliminated so they could directly shuffle money into the hands of the 1000 billionaires in this country
AI is a potentially high risk investment but the payoff is huge. It has the potential to let you lay off 20 to 30% of you
Re: Investment not expense (Score:2)
Why do billionaires even need tax breaks? They have plenty of money, and they aren't going to suddenly start sharing that money if you give them more.
It actually creates new jobs (Score:2)
Because now you need people to fix ai-generated slop. On the flip side, it does help you figure out which employees were never doing anything in the first place...