Last week provided new evidence that AI may be affecting employment data. US analyst Eric Basmajian showed labor productivity in heavily AI-adopting sectors has risen above pre-2023 trends, while other sectors have not. A Goldman Sachs note found sectors with higher AI usage are seeing steeper employment declines, though the result is sensitive to data sources.
Analysis across other high-income countries and narrower occupations muddies the picture, with the pattern largely limited to the tech sector. The key inflection point is 2022, when AI meant chatbots not agents. At the company level, Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft in the US, and Spotify in Sweden, saw revenue and headcount diverge after 2022.
Elsewhere in finance and professional services the pattern is weak. In software, entry-level hiring has fallen away even as senior roles hold firm across the US, UK, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. However, gaps in most AI-exposed jobs outside tech and outside the US tend to close.
While AI clearly disrupts job nature, hiring slowdowns likely began as a response to broader economic shocks and uncertainty. The concentration of movement in Big Tech and the US suggests the process is contingent and far from automatic, shaped by different structures, norms and regulations globally.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing