Executive Summary of Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence

The article, “Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence” by Brynjolfsson, Chandar, and Chen (August 2025), analyzes how generative AI has impacted U.S. entry-level employment using payroll data. Here are the most important key points followed by an in-depth summary.

Key Points

• Entry-level employment in AI-exposed occupations has declined sharply since late 2022, especially for workers aged 22–25.
• Employment for older workers and those in occupations less exposed to AI has remained stable or grown.
• AI’s labor market impact is concentrated in jobs where technology automates tasks rather than augments human work.
• Most employment adjustment occurs through job losses, not wage reduction.
  These effects are robust: factors like firm-level shocks, industry sector, teleworkability, and education do not explain away the findings.
• The trends became most pronounced after the widespread adoption of generative AI (late 2022 onward), suggesting AI is a causal factor.

Detailed Summary

Data and Methods

• Uses millions of monthly payroll records from ADP (largest U.S. payroll processor) through July 2025.
• Occupations were categorized based on established measures of generative AI exposure and whether AI use automates or augments work.

Main Findings

Decline for Young Workers in AI-Exposed Occupations

• Young workers (ages 22–25) in highly AI-exposed roles—like software engineering and customer support—experienced a 13% relative employment decline since late 2022.
• Employment for older workers in the same fields and for young workers in less-exposed roles (such as health aides) remained stable or increased.

Overall Employment Growth, Stagnant Young Worker Growth

• Aggregate employment is rising, but 22–25-year-olds have seen flat or negative job growth since the generative AI boom, especially in exposed jobs.

Automation Drives Decline

• AI-driven automation is substituting for entry-level human labor, while augmentation (where AI supports workers) is linked to employment growth.
• Declines are largest in occupations where AI mostly automates tasks.

Robustness to Confounders

• Effects persist after controlling for industry or firm-level shocks, removing tech sector jobs, or focusing only on remote/onsite roles.
• The decline is not explained by economic cycles, COVID effects, or differential hiring/firing at the firm level.

Compensation Mostly Unchanged

• Wages/salaries for workers have not declined in tandem with employment, suggesting that job cuts—not wage cuts—are the main mechanism of adjustment.

Consistency Across Occupations and Groups

• Patterns are visible for both tech and non-tech roles, across genders, and in both jobs amenable and not amenable to remote work.
  Declines for young workers in AI-exposed jobs began in late 2022, coinciding with widespread generative AI adoption.

Broader Implications

• The findings suggest generative AI is starting to cause significant and disproportionate impacts on entry-level employment, particularly for jobs where tasks can be automated.
• Experience and tacit knowledge protect older workers, while younger workers, whose skills are more “codified” and thus easily replaced by AI, face greater risks.
• The authors stress the need for ongoing monitoring as labor markets adjust and recommend further study to distinguish AI’s effects from broader technological or economic trends.

These results provide direct, large-scale evidence that the AI revolution is rapidly impacting young, entry-level workers in the American labor market, with automation as the primary driver rather than augmentation or wage suppression[1].

Sources
“Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence” by Brynjolfsson, Chandar, and Chen (August 2025),