Monday, October 26, 2026 · Edition updated 6:00 AM ETMON, OCT 26 editionNext edition in Next in --:--:--
Intelligence Verdict
Get the weekly brief
AI and your work

Is AI taking jobs?

What payroll data, trials at work and surveys of workers show so far. Young people in the jobs most exposed to AI are falling behind; across the whole economy, researchers don't yet see AI changing who has a job.

  • 19%fewer jobs than expected for 22 to 25-year-olds in the most exposed work
  • 52%of US workers use AI in their role
  • 120,136US job cuts announced this year that cite AI
Look up your job

Your job, in numbers.

Each job's page has the government's figures for jobs, pay and the ten-year outlook, its main tasks, and every study we found that names it.

12 jobs so far, with more to come.

Jobs and median pay for 2025 and the 2025 to 2035 outlook, from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook, read Oct 19, 2026.

The job data

Young workers first. Everyone else, not yet.

Payroll data shows young people in the most exposed jobs falling behind. Broader measures of who has a job don't yet show AI's mark, and the researchers say that could change quickly.

−3.8%

a year: employment of people aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed jobs

+1.1%

a year: employment of all ages in the most AI-exposed jobs

+2.0%

a year: employment of all ages in the least exposed jobs

Employment change a year, from the payroll data of about 25,000 US firms. The authors call it an early signal. Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Aug 10, 2026

payroll-data study

Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, Ruyu Chen (Stanford Digital Economy Lab)

“Employment among workers ages 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations now stands about 19% below where it would be”
  • “We do not see widespread, economy-wide job displacement associated with AI.”
  • “This divergence has widened steadily since we first documented it in August 2025”

Compared with people the same age in less exposed jobs. The gap was 15% a year earlier.

Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence (August 2026 update) · Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Aug 12, 2026

regularly updated tracker of occupational mix

The Budget Lab at Yale

“The occupational mix is not yet changing in ways that clearly align with the introduction of AI into the workforce.”
  • “Measures of AI usage show no connection to changes in employment or unemployment.”
  • “We plan on updating this analysis regularly.”

A tracker the Budget Lab updates as new government data comes out.

Tracking the Impact of AI on the Labor Market · The Budget Lab at Yale, Oct 14, 2026

Martha Gimbel, Joshua Kendall, Ryan Nunn (The Budget Lab at Yale)

“So far, this approach provides no clear evidence of AI effects on the labor market, but this could change quickly”
  • “No impact is evident through the post-2022 time window.”

What We Do and Don't Know About How AI is Affecting the Labor Market · The Budget Lab at Yale, May 7, 2026

Jed Kolko (Brookings)

“Early research findings on AI’s impact on the labor market are inconclusive.”

Research on AI and the labor market is still in the first inning · Brookings, Mar 10, 2026

government projections

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

“Increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) for writing is projected to dampen demand for these workers.”

The government's wording about writers. It names AI for paralegals, graphic designers, translators and accountants too.

Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–35 projections (AI mentioned in several occupation profiles) · BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Writers and Authors, Aug 27, 2026

Molly Kinder (Brookings Metro); Martha Gimbel, Joshua Kendall, Maddie Lee (The Budget Lab at Yale)

“Our data show stability, not disruption, in AI’s labor market impacts—for now.”
  • “AI’s early stages look less like a revolution and more like a familiar, gradual evolution.”

A year old. The Budget Lab's tracker carries this work on.

New data show no AI jobs apocalypse—for now · Brookings, Oct 1, 2025

Trials at work

When people use AI on the job.

Experiments that gave some workers AI and not others, then measured the difference. Most are a year or more old, with AI that has since been overtaken.

staggered rollout to customer-support agents

+14%issues resolved an hour by support agents with an AI assistant

Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li, Lindsey Raymond

“Access to the tool increases productivity, as measured by issues resolved per hour, by 14% on average”
  • “including a 34% improvement for novice and low-skilled workers”

Data from 2020 and 2021, with an older AI tool.

Generative AI at Work · NBER Working Paper 31161 (published in QJE 2025), Nov 2023

randomized field experiment

25%+faster, for consultants on tasks AI handles well

Harvard Business School researchers with Boston Consulting Group (758 consultants)

“For tasks within the AI frontier, ChatGPT-4 significantly increased performance”
  • “boosting speed by over 25%”
  • “human-rated performance by over 40%”
  • “task completion by over 12%”

On a task outside the frontier, consultants using AI were 19% less likely to produce correct solutions, as Axios reported it. Axios, Sep 29, 2023

2023, with GPT-4.

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier · Harvard Digital Data Design Institute (D^3), Sep 21, 2023

randomized controlled trial

34–140%more productive on five of six legal tasks, depending on the task

Daniel Schwarcz, Sam Manning, Patrick Barry, David R. Cleveland, JJ Prescott, Beverly Rich

“AI assistance significantly boosts productivity in five out of six tested legal tasks”
  • “o1-preview increasing productivity by 34% to 140%”
  • “o1-preview improved the analytical depth of participants' work product but resulted in some hallucinations”

Law students rather than working lawyers, with AI models from 2024 and 2025.

AI-Powered Lawyering: AI Reasoning Models, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and the Future of Legal Practice · Centre for the Governance of AI, Apr 9, 2026

randomized experiment

−40%time spent on professional writing tasks, with quality up 18%

Shakked Noy, Whitney Zhang (MIT); Science

“The average time taken decreased by 40% and output quality rose by 18%.”

2023, with ChatGPT. The writers were professionals such as marketers and grant writers.

Experimental evidence on the productivity effects of generative artificial intelligence · Stanford SCALE repository (Science, July 2023), Jul 2023

What workers say

Half use it. Many worry.

Large surveys of US workers and adults. They show what people say, not what happens to their jobs.

52%

of US workers use AI in their role; 15% use it every day

“More than half of U.S. workers (52%) now use AI in their role, with 30% using it frequently (a few times a week or more).”

Quarterly workforce survey of 22,573 employed U.S. adults, fielded May 6-20, 2026. Gallup, Jul 20, 2026

31%

of workers who use AI say their employer has given them more responsibilities because of it

“Thirty-one percent of AI users say their AI use has led to their employer asking them to take on more responsibilities.”

15,482 U.S. employees, Jan 26-Mar 24, 2026; 7,845 use AI in their jobs. Gallup, Oct 6, 2026

73%

of US adults under 30 say AI will lead to fewer jobs, up from 61% two years ago

“For example, 73% of adults under 30 now say AI will lead to fewer jobs, up from 61% two years ago.”

U.S. adults, June 22-28, 2026. Pew Research Center, Aug 18, 2026

52%

of US workers said they were worried about AI's future effect on the workplace (asked in October 2024)

“About half of workers (52%) say they're worried about the future impact of AI use in the workplace”

5,273 employed U.S. adults, Oct 7-13, 2024. Pew Research Center, Feb 25, 2025

Layoffs that cite AI

Announced cuts, not measured losses.

Employers have cited AI in more job cuts this year than any other reason. These are what companies announce; they don't show how many jobs AI actually replaced.

120,136

US job cuts announced so far in 2026 that cite AI, about 21% of all announced cuts

“So far this year, AI has been cited in 120,136 job cut announcements, approximately 21% of all cuts,” Challenger, Gray & Christmas, September 2026 job cuts report, Oct 1, 2026

184,538

cuts citing AI since 2023, when it was first counted as a reason, as of the July report

“Since 2023, when AI was first tracked as a distinct reason, it has been cited in 184,538 job cut announcements.” Challenger, Gray & Christmas, July 2026 report, Aug 6, 2026

Company-reported

Atlassian

About 1,600 roles, roughly 10% of the company · Mar 11, 2026

“We fundamentally believe people and AI create the best outcomes.”

Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO. Atlassian blog

Company-reported

Cloudflare

More than 1,100 employees globally · May 7, 2026

“Cloudflare's usage of AI has increased by more than 600% in the last three months alone.”

Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn, co-founders. Cloudflare blog, "Building for the future"

News report

Monday.com

About 630 staff, or 20% of headcount · Jul 22, 2026

“support a leaner, more focused operating model”

Monday.com, as quoted by TechCrunch; the company is concentrating on its AI Work Platform. TechCrunch

News reports name more companies. We list one only once we've read the company's own statement or a trusted outlet's report.

AI companies' own data

What the AI makers see in their own data.

Anthropic and Microsoft study how people use their own AI at work. It's useful data, but it comes from companies that sell AI, so we label it company-reported.

Company-reported

Anthropic

“We find no systematic increase in unemployment for highly exposed workers since late 2022”
  • “though we find suggestive evidence that hiring of younger workers has slowed in exposed occupations”
  • “Occupations with higher observed exposure are projected by the BLS to grow less through 2034”

Computer programmers: “Computer Programmers are at the top, with 75% coverage”

Computer & Math category: “Claude currently covers just 33% of all tasks in the Computer & Math category.”

From Anthropic's own Claude conversations, set against government job data.

Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure · Anthropic, Mar 5, 2026

usage data from Anthropic's own Claude conversationsCompany-reported

Anthropic

“people who use Claude in the most automated way expect AI to take on more of their tasks in the next year”
  • “Work-related queries subside on the weekend, though less dramatically in the most highly paid occupations”
  • “more compute is associated with more valuable artifacts”

From Anthropic's own Claude conversations and a survey of its users.

Anthropic Economic Index report: Cadences · Anthropic, Jun 26, 2026

Company-reported

Anthropic

“Claude usage remains concentrated among certain tasks, most of them related to coding”

Computer and mathematical share: “representing a third of conversations on Claude.ai and nearly half of 1P API traffic”

Jobs with AI use on a quarter of tasks: “49% of jobs have seen AI usage for at least a quarter of their tasks”

From Anthropic's own Claude conversations.

Anthropic Economic Index report: Economic primitives · Anthropic, Jan 15, 2026

analysis of Microsoft Bing Copilot conversations mapped to O*NET work activitiesCompany-reported

Kiran Tomlinson, Sonia Jaffe, Will Wang, Scott Counts, Siddharth Suri (Microsoft Research / Microsoft)

“We find that the most common and successful AI-assisted work activities involve information work”

Highest-scoring occupation (paper v5, Table 3): “Interpreters and Translators”

From conversations with Microsoft's Bing Copilot. Its scores measure how much of a job's activities overlap with what people do with AI, not job loss.

Working with AI: Measuring the Applicability of Generative AI to Occupations · arXiv:2507.07935v6 (Microsoft Research), Dec 22, 2025

Can AI do it yet?

Work tasks AI is being tested on.

Each task is placed on our six-step ladder from a maker's claim to wide use, computed from the evidence.

AI and coding

Answer customer-service chats and calls

Stage 4 of 6Tested with real people

Field study of 5,179 support agents: AI assistant raised output 14%

Make scientific discoveries

Stage 3 of 6Independently tested

METR: AI-era maths results up somewhat; no clear algorithm speed-up

Tell me what's in the news

Stage 3 of 6Independently tested

Almost half of AI assistants' news answers had a significant issue

Read and understand a long document

Stage 3 of 6Independently tested

2024 book test: GPT-4o 55.8% on claims people found easy

Not here yet

What we haven't checked yet.

  • Layoffs at more companies that news reports link to AI. We add each one once we've read it at the company or a trusted outlet.
  • Trials of AI in radiology, such as Sweden's mammography screening trial, and self-driving trucks. Each job page will get them once checked.
  • Evidence from outside the US. Most of the studies here use American data.

Checked Oct 19, 2026. How we check

Watch

Videos on AI and work.

Talks, interviews and explainers, each with our short summary. They play in YouTube's own player.

All videos on AI and work
FRANCE 24 English · Oct 6, 2026

US payroll data shows young workers' jobs most affected by artificial intelligence • FRANCE 24

FRANCE 24 reports on new payroll figures showing employment of 22- to 25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed US jobs falling year on year, based on the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and ADP Research Canaries Dashboard, with an interview with ADP Research's chief economist.

McKinsey & Company · Aug 1, 2026

The Biggest AI Opportunity Isn’t Replacing People | Stanford Economist

Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson discusses with McKinsey's talent team how AI is changing the career ladder, why productivity gains take time, and why redesigning work offers more than cutting headcount.

Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge · Feb 25, 2026

2025-26 Stone Lecture - Professor David Autor

MIT economist David Autor gives Cambridge's 13th Sir Richard Stone Annual Lecture, "Expertise, Artificial Intelligence, and the Work of the Future," on how AI could change the value of human expertise at work.