(Sept 21): Companies using artificial intelligence are adding more jobs than those that are not but those gains sharply favour senior employees over junior workers, according to a new study spanning 41 countries.
The number of employees in senior positions rose by 6.7% over five years at companies adopting AI while junior employment declined 3% in the same period, researchers Bharat Chandar of Stanford University and Bouke Klein Teeselink of King’s College London said in a paper released on Monday. Although overall hiring increased, the share of junior workers at those companies fell by 1.9 percentage points, they found. The shift away from lower-level workers occurred in numerous countries, including Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the UK.
“AI is labour-saving for junior workers and labour-expanding for seniors in exposed occupations,” the authors wrote. “Junior employment losses run somewhat deeper in richer and more digitised economies.”
The academics analysed a sample of 1.25 billion job postings and 154 million employment records between January 2021 and March 2026.
They also found that employment for computer-related and mathematical roles, which are among the most exposed to AI, increased by 0.8 percentage points at companies that adopted AI. There, too, was a shift toward senior workers, the researchers added.
Chandar and his colleagues at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab wrote last month that employment among 22- to 25-year-olds in jobs that are highly exposed to AI is 19% below what it would be had it kept pace with less-exposed roles. That comes as young adults in the US grow increasingly concerned about AI-related job losses, the Pew Research Center said in a report.
Still, concerns about job displacement caused by AI have been overshadowed this month by warnings from AI executives and employees over the risks the technology’s models pose to humans.