AI Advancements Hinder Young Workers’ Job Prospects

New research shows that artificial intelligence is making it harder for young workers to land jobs, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday (Aug. 26).

The trend is happening in fields where generative AI tools can automate jobs done by humans, the report said, citing research by Stanford University economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen.

The researchers reviewed data on millions of workers at tens of thousands of companies, including detailed information on employees’ ages and jobs, making this one of the clearest indicators to date of the disruptive impact of AI, according to the report.

“There’s a clear, evident change when you specifically look at young workers who are highly exposed to AI,” Brynjolfsson said, per the report.

However, the research uncovered evidence that in areas where AI can help people do their jobs, instead of replacing them, employment is improving for younger workers, the report said.

While there has been some anecdotal evidence of AI’s effect on some jobs, there has been little in the way of hard proof of its impact on the job market, according to the report. That’s due in part to the fact that OpenAI’s ChatGPT emerged at a time of steep interest rates and cooling employment growth. The new research helps isolate AI’s impact from those other contributors.

The economists studied areas where AI can automate many of the duties workers perform, and thus potentially replace them. Those include jobs like software developers, receptionists, translators and customer service representatives, the report said.

They found that employment in those categories has softened since late 2022 compared to other occupations, with the weakness centered around younger workers, according to the report.

“After late 2022 and early 2023, you start seeing that their employment has really gone in a different direction than other workers,” Brynjolfsson said, per the report.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Workers Say Fears About GenAI Taking Their Jobs is Overblown” found a divergence between perceptions of generative AI’s impact on the job market and perceptions of its threat to individual employment.

Although most workers agreed that the technology presents a systemic risk of job displacement, suggesting a wide-ranging belief in its disruptive potential, a smaller number said they thought their own jobs were in jeopardy.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.

The post AI Advancements Hinder Young Workers’ Job Prospects appeared first on PYMNTS.com.