Stanford Study: Unemployment Rate Increase in AI High-Exposure Occupations Actually Lower Than Low-Exposure Occupations, "Taking Away Jobs" Prediction Fails

According to The Guardian, although Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted that AI would eliminate white-collar jobs on a large scale, a year later, a large-scale wave of unemployment has not emerged. The latest analysis from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research shows that since ChatGPT was launched in 2022, the unemployment rate for occupational groups with high AI exposure rose by only 0.77 percentage points, lower than the 0.85 percentage points for low-exposure groups. Economists point out that AI's biggest impact currently is not reducing the number of jobs, but changing the nature of work—integrating functions, raising skill thresholds, and compressing new hiring. A ZipRecruiter survey shows that about 74% of employers have listed AI skills as an important advantage or a requirement. MIT Professor Paul Osterman warns that AI will accelerate the shift of enterprises towards outsourcing and contract labor, with about 35% of the US workforce already in an "easily replaceable" state; low-skilled workers may require public policy intervention for protection. Economists generally believe that the full impact of AI on the employment market will still take several years to manifest.