{"id":41769,"date":"2025-09-03T22:22:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T22:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/41769\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T22:22:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T22:22:10","slug":"the-professions-trying-to-get-ahead-with-ai-are-those-most-likely-to-lose-their-jobs-to-it-st-louis-fed-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/41769\/","title":{"rendered":"The professions trying to get ahead with AI are those most likely to lose their jobs to it, St. Louis Fed says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"yf-1woyvo2\">\n<li class=\"yf-1woyvo2\">\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\"><strong>A new St. Louis Fed study suggests the U.S. may be seeing early signs of AI-driven job displacement, <\/strong>with sectors like computing and math showing the highest overlap between AI adoption and rising unemployment. While entry-level workers appear most vulnerable, research also shows experienced employees in AI-heavy fields are benefiting, as companies slow hiring in traditional roles while doubling down on AI-focused talent.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">The industries which raced toward artificial intelligence may already be reaping the rewards of their gamble, but it seems their staffers might also be paying the price.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">According to a St. Louis Fed study released last week, the U.S. \u201cmay be witnessing the early stages of AI-driven job displacement,\u201d with a weighting toward the sectors which adopted the emerging technology most heavily.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">The research, released on Aug. 26, sought to establish whether AI is contributing to rising unemployment. This <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2025\/08\/01\/jobs-report-july-downward-revisions-fed-rate-cuts-jerome-powell\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:comes after an unwelcome surprise in the labor market;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">comes after an unwelcome surprise in the labor market<\/a> early last month when the Bureau of Labor Statistics hugely revised down its data: May\u2019s tally was cut from 144,000 to 19,000, and June\u2019s total was slashed from 147,000 to just 14,000, resulting in a combined loss of of 258,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">The weaker picture of the economy prompted a raft of questions: Is hiring slowing because of fears over Trump\u2019s tariff plan? Is the employment market slowing because of uncertainty more widely? Or is there a factor which is fundamentally reshaping the labor market?<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">We have also heard the many, many warnings about jobs displaced owing to AI. Is there a possibility that this is driving the underlying shake-up?<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">\u201cAccording to the nationally representative Real-Time Population Survey (RPS), 23% of employed workers used generative AI for work at least once per week as of late 2024\u2014a remarkable adoption rate for such a nascent technology,\u201d wrote St. Louis Fed researchers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stlouisfed.org\/on-the-economy\/2025\/aug\/is-ai-contributing-unemployment-evidence-occupational-variation?utm_campaign=1756395207&amp;utm_content=stlouisfed&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_term=Chart\/Graph,Labor+Markets+%26+Unemployment#authorbox\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Serdar Ozkan;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Serdar Ozkan<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stlouisfed.org\/on-the-economy\/2025\/aug\/is-ai-contributing-unemployment-evidence-occupational-variation?utm_campaign=1756395207&amp;utm_content=stlouisfed&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_term=Chart\/Graph,Labor+Markets+%26+Unemployment#authorbox\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Nicholas Sullivan;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Nicholas Sullivan<\/a>. \u201cDespite this widespread integration, we still know surprisingly little about AI\u2019s employment effects because of the newness of the technology.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">What FRED, the St. Louis Fed\u2019s online database, can chart is the percentage point change in unemployment between 2022 and 2025 in certain industries, and its correlation to AI exposure in each of the sectors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">The research showed a correlation coefficient of 0.57, meaning generally the occupations that embraced generative AI most intensively showed the largest unemployment increases. Those sectors included, at the extreme end, computers and math. In these professions, AI adoption was at a little under 80% while the unemployment change increased by 1.2% over the past three years.<\/p>\n<p> Story Continues <\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">Of course, if you\u2019ve checked in on tech employment over the past three years, AI hasn\u2019t been the only story in town. Big Tech especially was criticized for over-hiring during the pandemic, prompting a wave of layoffs in the years following.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">Former PayPal executive Keith Rabois, for example, <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2023\/03\/10\/google-over-hired-talent-do-nothing-fake-work-stop-working-rivals-former-paypal-boss-keith-rabois\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:said in 2023 the axing of many roles was overdue;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">said in 2023 the axing of many roles was overdue<\/a>: \u201cAll these people were extraneous, this has been true for a long time; the vanity metric of hiring employees was this false god in some ways \u2026 There\u2019s nothing for these people to do\u2014it\u2019s all fake work. Now that\u2019s being exposed, what do these people actually do? They go to meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">Likewise tech specialists\u2014particularly those in the AI field\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2023\/04\/07\/tech-bank-jobs-paid-to-do-no-work\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:told Fortune they were being paid six-figure sums to be \u201cpenned\u201d;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">told Fortune they were being paid six-figure sums to be \u201cpenned\u201d<\/a> in by certain companies in order to stop rivals hiring top talent. Yet by hiring these individuals with no real job for them to do, the employees often ended up doing a 10-minute task a day before using their working hours as free time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">Big Tech didn\u2019t try to hide the correction either. Mark Zuckerberg launched his \u201cyear of efficiency\u201d in 2023 which shrank headcount by 22% after years of double-digit growth, with Alphabet\u2019s Sundar Pichai adding in 2024 that <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/alphabet\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Google;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Google<\/a> would be \u201cremoving layers to simplify execution and drive velocity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">At the opposite end of the spectrum, industries with lower AI adoption rates are seeing relatively unchanged employment levels. The personal services industry, for example, had the lowest adoption rate of the sectors surveyed and had an unchanged employment rate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">Likewise, the legal and social services sectors had an adoption rate of around 18% and negative unemployment rates over the past three years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">There\u2019s also evidence to suggest that AI can be more disruptive to careers depending how recently a person has joined the labor market. For example, a landmark study led by Stanford professor Erik Brynjolfsson last month found entry-level workers in the occupations most exposed to AI are already experiencing a 13% relative decline in employment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/deutsche-bank\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Deutsche Bank;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Deutsche Bank<\/a>, referencing Brynjolfsson\u2019s study, noted to clients this morning: \u201cIt\u2019s one of the first high-profile reports to identify the effects of AI potentially showing up in labor market data. It finds that since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, there has been a 6% decline in employment for workers aged 22 to 25 in the occupations that can most be augmented by AI\u2014such as software engineering and customer services\u2014even after controlling for firm-specific shocks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">\u201cBy contrast, there has been a 6% to 9% increase in employment for more experienced workers in the same professions, the study found, citing payroll data.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">Goldman Sachs also noted a change in hiring owing to artificial intelligence in a research note Monday\u2014but not because of displacement. The Goldman Sachs Analyst Index for August found 58% of surveyed analysts reported the companies they cover are hiring at about the same pace as at the beginning of 2025\u2014but concentrated on AI-related positions. Conversely, companies were pausing or axing headcount for non-AI-related roles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"yf-1090901\">This story was originally featured on <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2025\/09\/03\/professions-ai-most-likely-to-lose-jobs-st-louis-fed\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Fortune.com;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Fortune.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new St. Louis Fed study suggests the U.S. may be seeing early signs of AI-driven job displacement,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[31609,289,79,18,31125,233,5568,19,17,227,5814,31610,2297],"class_list":{"0":"post-41769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-adoption-rate","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-emerging-technology","13":"tag-employment","14":"tag-generative-ai","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-jobs","18":"tag-labor-market","19":"tag-traditional-roles","20":"tag-unemployment"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}