Industries most exposed to AI are not only seeing increases in productivity, but also employment and wage growth

Predictions about the impact of artificial intelligence range from apocalyptic to utopian proportions. For example, an October 2025 report from Senate Democrats predicted that AI will destroy millions of jobs in the United States. A few years earlier, consulting firm McKinsey predicted that AI would add trillions to the global economy, while emphasizing that job losses could be mitigated by training workers to do new things.

The problem is that many of these claims are based on forecasts, oversimplified surveys, or thought experiments, rather than on observed changes in the economy. This makes it difficult for the public, and often for policymakers, to know what they can trust.

As a labor economist who studies how technology and organizational change affects productivity and well-being, I believe a better place to start is with actual data on production, employment and wages – all of which look comparatively more promising.

AI and jobs

In one of my new research papers with economist Andrew Johnston, we examined how exposure…