AI Adoption Creates Jobs but Leaves Junior Workers Behind
According to a recent study encompassing 41 countries, companies that are leveraging artificial intelligence are creating a greater number of jobs compared to those that are not. However, the benefits of these job gains are disproportionately skewed toward senior employees, leaving junior workers at a disadvantage. The number of employees in senior positions increased by 6.7% over five years at companies that adopted AI, whereas junior employment experienced a decline of 3% during the same timeframe, according to researchers Bharat Chandar of Stanford University and Bouke Klein Teeselink of King’s College London in a paper released on Monday.
Despite an overall increase in hiring, the proportion of junior workers within those companies declined by 1.9 percentage points, according to their findings. The transition away from lower-level workers has been observed in various nations, including Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and the UK. “AI is labor saving for junior workers and labor expanding for seniors in exposed occupations,” the authors wrote. “Junior employment losses run somewhat deeper in richer and more digitized economies.” The academics conducted an analysis of a sample comprising 1.25 billion job postings alongside 154 million employment records, spanning the period from January 2021 to March 2026. Employment in computer-related and mathematical roles, which are particularly susceptible to AI advancements, saw an increase of 0.8 percentage points at firms that implemented AI technologies.
There, too, was a transition toward more experienced workers, the researchers noted. Chandar and his colleagues at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab noted last month that employment among 22- to-25-year-olds in jobs significantly exposed to AI is 19% lower than it would have been if it had maintained the same growth rate as less-exposed roles. According to a report, there is a growing concern among young adults in the US regarding job losses associated with AI. Nonetheless, apprehensions regarding job displacement attributed to AI have been eclipsed this month by alerts from AI executives and employees concerning the dangers that the technology’s models present to humanity.
