By: David Rotman<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tOriginally published on\u00a0MIT Technology Review<\/a>, May 26, 2026. Haven\u2019t you heard? White-collar jobs are going away, decimated by AI. Waves of layoffs in the tech sector (most recently at Coinbase and Meta and Cisco) are said to presage what will soon come for all of us knowledge workers. But before you quit your job as a software developer or financial analyst\u2014or tech journalist\u2014and look to join the plumbers\u2019 union, it\u2019s worth considering today\u2019s economic research on whether artificial intelligence has actually begun to devour white-collar work.<\/p>\n The short answer is: No.<\/p>\n Despite the warning by some of an imminent jobs apocalypse<\/a> that will destroy much of if not most such work, or the rumblings about a \u201cpermanent underclass<\/a>,\u201d there\u2019s scant evidence that AI has yet had any large-scale impact on the US labor market.<\/p>\n Analysis of the data<\/a> gathered for the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that the unemployment rate for the jobs potentially most affected by AI is actually lower than that for occupations less exposed to the technology. And, critically in the mind of economists, there are no signs that large numbers of people are shifting<\/a> from jobs threatened by AI to supposedly safer ones, such as those involving mostly manual labor.<\/p>\n While the current labor statistics don\u2019t preclude a sudden job upheaval in the coming years, they do throw doubt on the inevitability of the doomsday scenarios and the pace at which they\u2019d unfold. Everyone in the AI community, it seems, is predicting that the technology will soon wipe out jobs, and everyone, it also seems, knows some young wannabe workers who can\u2019t find one. Perhaps we haven\u2019t seen any major disruption in the labor market statistics yet, people often say, but just wait.<\/p>\n But maybe we should pay attention to what the data is showing us. And right now, the numbers paint a picture of a relatively stable labor market in which AI disruptions remain largely speculative.<\/p>\n
\nWhat do the numbers really say about the impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market? The answer might surprise you.<\/p>\n