this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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The Evidence That AI Is Destroying Jobs For Young People Just Got Stronger (www.derekthompson.org)
submitted 1 day ago by bytesonbike@discuss.online to c/technology@lemmy.world
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In a new paper, several Stanford economists studied payroll data from the private company ADP, which covers millions of workers, through mid-2025. They found that young workers aged 22–25 in “highly AI-exposed” jobs, such as software developers and customer service agents, experienced a 13 percent decline in employment since the advent of ChatGPT. Notably, the economists found that older workers and less-exposed jobs, such as home health aides, saw steady or rising employment. “There’s a clear, evident change when you specifically look at young workers who are highly exposed to AI,” Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson, who wrote the paper with Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen, told the Wall Street Journal.

In five months, the question of “Is AI reducing work for young Americans?” has its fourth answer: from possibly, to definitely, to almost certainly no, to plausibly yes. You might find this back-and-forth annoying. I think it’s fantastic. This is a model for what I want from public commentary on social and economic trends: Smart, quantitatively rich, and good-faith debate of issues of seismic consequence to American society.

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[–] riskable@programming.dev 34 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Meh. Nothing in this article is strong evidence of anything. They're only looking at a tiny sample of data and wildly speculating about which entry-level jobs are being supplanted by AI.

As a software engineer who uses AI, I fail to see how AI can replace any given entry-level software engineering position. There's no way! Any company that does that is just asking for trouble.

What's more likely, is that AI is making senior software engineers more productive so they don't need to hire more developers to assist them with more trivial/time consuming tasks.

This is a very temporary thing, though. As anyone in software can tell you: Software only gets more complex over time. Eventually these companies will have to start hiring new people again. This process usually takes about six months to a year.

If AI is causing a drop in entry-level hiring, my speculation (which isn't as wild as in the article since I'm actually there on the ground using this stuff) is that it's just a temporary blip while companies work out how to take advantage the slightly-enhanced productivity.

It's inevitable: They'll start new projects to build new stuff because now—suddenly—they have the budget. Then they'll hire people to make up the difference.

This is how companies have worked since the invention of bullshit jobs. The need for bullshit grows with productivity.

[–] elephantium@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

I fail to see how AI can replace any given entry-level SE

You don't "get it"?

AI is making senior software engineers more productive so they don’t need to hire more devs

Yes, I think you do.

I largely look at this as leadership using AI hype as an excuse to cut staff regardless of actual productivity. The house of cards hasn't come down quite yet.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 15 points 1 day ago

Top upvoted comment just tore a big fat hole into the entire argument and I have to say, good for the comments section. That's so rare.

One open question here is whether we’re seeing youth employment decrease because AI is effectively replacing entry level workers in these fields, or because executives wrongly think AI can or will soon be able to do so?

You have to assume that if anybody puts a hiring freeze for junior employees right now it'd be out of some combination of caution, hype and insecurity about the economic landscape thanks to the usual suspects.

Turns out if the discussion is "quantitatively rich" but is ignoring the obvious qualitative observation it may end up flip-flopping a bunch. I'm not sure I'm as excited about that as the author, because man, is that a constant of the modern corporate world and does it suck and cost people money and stress.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

There's also the possibility of broader economic headwinds causing decreased youth employment, even if they haven't hit older workers yet.