While millions of Gen Z workers face unemployment in the white-collar AI “job apocalypse,” older and more experienced workers are faring well, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
AI adoption is more complicated than technology simply taking over jobs, wrote J. Scott Davis, Dallas Fed assistant vice president, who authored the study. In AI-exposed industries, the technology is actually helping experienced workers elevate their productivity by outsourcing tasks to AI, thus enabling them to focus on work that adds more value to a company.
“If AI were simply automating jobs, we would expect both wages and employment to decline,” Davis wrote.
But that’s not the case, he explained. His analysis of wage data since fall 2022 revealed AI’s impact is being felt very differently across industries because of the types of jobs the technology threatens. It comes down to the kind of knowledge needed for entry-level jobs.
“Returns on job experience are increasing in AI-exposed occupations,” Davis wrote. “Young workers with primarily codifiable knowledge and limited experience will likely face challenging job markets.”
