| The US labor market is cooling, but one potential culprit can be ruled out: Artificial intelligence does not appear to be causing a slowdown in hiring across the US economy. At least not yet. US workers whose jobs involve tasks that AI can do are actually much less likely than other workers to be unemployed, according to an analysis released today by the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a think tank. They’re also much less likely to be leaving the labor force. “The evidence that we have so far about the level of diffusion and the actual application of AI in the labor market suggests that these more recent movements [in US jobs data] are not going to be related to AI,” said Nathan Goldschlag, EIG’s director of research. The report looked at multiple measures of AI “exposure” — generally, the share of a job’s tasks that AI could do — and compared more- and less-exposed workers across a range of labor market outcomes, including exiting the workforce and switching occupations. Across measures and metrics, the authors concluded they did not “see any meaningful AI impacts in the labor market.” Economists at the Yale Budget Lab are looking at this question, too, and so far their analysis is also “showing no overall effects” of AI on the US labor market, says Martha Gimbel, the lab’s executive director. Evidence of AI-driven job losses are hard to find even among recent college graduates, who are facing a difficult job market and who are often mentioned as at risk from the technology. EIG’s report, based on data from the US Census through May, concludes that “unemployment rates have been creeping up for young workers and recent graduates alike, whether they are AI-exposed or not.” Other evidence on early-career jobs is more mixed. For example, an analysis by the analytics firm Revelio Labs found that job openings for entry-level workers in AI-exposed fields had fallen faster than openings for entry-level workers in less exposed fields. “When zooming out across the whole US economy, it’s still too early to see widespread job loss from AI,” said Bharat Chandar, a labor economist at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. However, he cautions that Census datasets can involve relatively small samples for certain subsets of workers — like recent college graduates. “The main data sources used by researchers are not detailed enough yet to give us an up-to-date view of what’s happening with 22-25 year olds in the most AI-exposed jobs, for example,” he told Bloomberg Weekend. What about the fact that companies like Microsoft are laying off workers as they simultaneously use more and more AI? Or that startups seem able to grow revenue while staying leaner than ever before? Goldschlag says his report is meant as “a set of indicators that we should watch.” Right now, AI isn’t showing up in the aggregate labor data but “that’s not to say it won’t,” he says. The companies staying lean thanks to AI could be anomalies — or they could be bellwethers. “The economy has a lot going on right now,” Gimbel cautions. “Not everything is about AI.” I’ll try taping that last bit up above my computer, as a reminder. — Walter Frick, Bloomberg Weekend | 
