Strip out construction, and the picture in the industries where AI has actually established itself \u2014 marketing, graphic design, customer service, document processing, software \u2014 looks worse than the headline suggests. Corporate layoff announcements explicitly attributed to AI resulted in approximately 21,900 employees being laid off in April, the highest single-month figure Goldman has tracked since it began counting in 2023. Total AI-attributed layoffs now stand at 136,000 over three years. And the boardroom conversation is intensifying: 24% of Russell 3000 companies mentioned AI and labor together on Q1 2026 earnings calls, a figure that has risen sharply and shows no sign of plateauing.<\/p>\n
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A generational tilt, still forming<\/strong><\/p>\n Within that overall picture, Goldman\u2019s tracker is beginning to show a pattern worth watching: a slight positive correlation between AI adoption rates and unemployment among workers under 30, measured across industries. It is not yet a clean structural break \u2014 in fact, Goldman\u2019s own data shows young tech workers\u2019 unemployment has recently moved back in line with the broader tech workforce \u2014 but the cross-industry signal is consistent enough that Goldman says it will continue to monitor closely.<\/p>\n Academic studies Goldman compiled show generative AI delivers a 23% average productivity uplift \u2014 gains that flow disproportionately to workers senior enough to leverage them, not to those whose core value was executing the tasks AI now handles.<\/p>\n At the economy-wide level, the labor market remains resilient. UBS economists, in a note published Thursday, project nonfarm payrolls added around 95,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate holding near 4.33%. Their conclusion echoes Goldman\u2019s: AI\u2019s broader impact is unlikely to manifest as a simple or persistent rise in unemployment. UBS describes a race between \u201crising job destruction\u201d and \u201cstrong job creation and stable unemployment,\u201d depending on how quickly new roles and industries emerge.\u00a0The likely outcome, it adds, is \u201csignificant occupational churn and periodic dislocation.\u201d For now, the blue-collar gains are compensating for the bleeding in entry-level hiring. <\/p>\n Firm-level AI adoption is puttering along. Census Bureau data compiled by Goldman shows 19.5% of U.S. establishments now use AI in regular business functions, a 0.3 percentage-point drop from the last tracker, with 22.7% expected within six months. Where it is being adopted, though, Goldman cites \u201cacademic studies\u201d implying a 23% average productivity uplift, and a 33% boost based off company anecdotes.<\/p>\n Chemical manufacturing and electrical equipment firms report the largest expected increases in adoption ahead \u2014 the next frontier of displacement, moving beyond knowledge work into industrial settings.<\/p>\n For now, the race between AI-driven job displacement and job creation is tightening. The workers pulling ahead are the ones pouring concrete for the data centers. The workers falling behind are the ones those data centers were built to replace. And when the concrete is poured, the question will still be: what\u2019s next?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The net number of jobs AI is eliminating each month is shrinking. That sounds like good news. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,986,26205,179,18,300,72144,19,17,227,8935,42117],"class_list":["post-514265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-data-centers","tag-disruption","tag-economy","tag-eire","tag-gen-z","tag-goldman-sachs-group","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jobs","tag-u-s-jobs-report","tag-ubs-group"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116679259982442264","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514265","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=514265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}