Evaluating the Impact of AI on the Labor Market: Current State of Affairs (budgetlab.yale.edu)

A new 33‑month analysis of U.S. employment since ChatGPT’s November 2022 debut finds no discernible, economy‑wide disruption from generative AI: the overall pace of occupational change and employment composition to date looks similar to earlier technology transitions (computers, the internet) rather than a sudden collapse in demand for cognitive labor. This broader-lens study complements other work that flags early, localized impacts on certain occupations and demographic groups (for example, early‑career workers), but it undercuts alarmist headlines claiming immediate mass job loss from AI. Methodologically, the authors compare the speed of occupational‑mix shifts across multiple metrics to historical episodes of technological change and find no exceptional deviation in the 33‑month window. They stress that this is a contemporaneous, descriptive snapshot—not a forecast—and note historical precedent: transformative workplace adoption of prior technologies unfolded over years to decades (computers only became widespread in offices nearly a decade after public release). The implication for the AI/ML community is twofold: short‑term macro labor impacts appear limited, but continued monthly monitoring is warranted because targeted occupational effects and longer‑term structural shifts may yet emerge.