Bots may be everywhere from freeways to sidewalks and skies, but the one place they’ve been hard to find is in employment data.
Artificial intelligence or superintelligence or whatever you want to call it will be top of mind ahead of Friday’s September jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the last monthly employment summary from the BLS before the Federal Reserve decides what’s next for interest rates at the end of October. On Tuesday, we’ll also get figures on job openings, and on Wednesday, ADP will release its monthly look at private-sector employment.
Robot Got Your Job?
AI is upending work as we know it, from taking on menial tasks to creating digital doubles so your boss can skip a meeting. But despite Anthropic’s CEO saying last year that the technology could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar roles, recent reports signal that robots may not actually be stealing our jobs (at least, not yet):
- In July, researchers at Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research pointed out that while unemployment is rising for workers with jobs most exposed to AI-driven disruption, it’s not doing so any faster than for the least exposed occupations.
- Some studies suggest that AI could actually boost employment for certain jobs. A report from Ramp and Revelio Labs found that companies making the largest investments in AI grow employment by roughly 10% following adoption. Another report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that when AI has an impact on just a few tasks for a role, employment growth can actually increase for that role since workers can focus on other things, like idea generation and critical thinking.
Positive Forecast: Friday’s report is expected to show the addition of 100,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.2%, according to a Reuters poll of economists. “Expectations are the labor market has improved in recent months,” James Ragan, co-chief investment officer at D.A. Davidson, told the outlet.