An Apollo analysis of 321 occupations found that wages in jobs highly exposed to AI grew 6.7% more slowly after 2023, with no statistically significant employment effect. The gap was 10.7% in the lowest-paid quartile and absent in the highest.
The first measurable mark AI has left on the labour market is not unemployment. Apollo’s chief economist Torsten Slok says the employment effect so far is insignificant, and that the visible damage is to pay.
His analysis with Sania Edlich found that wages in occupations highly exposed to AI grew 6.7% more slowly after 2023 than in low-exposure work. Employment in those occupations showed no statistically significant change.
The distribution is the part worth sitting with. The gap was 10.7% in the bottom wage quartile, 5.4% in the second and 4.0% in the third, and there was no significant effect at all in the top quartile.
The method is unusual and worth stating. The authors matched 321 occupations to labour statistics data from 2015 to 2025, using the Anthropic Economic Index, which measures observed AI usage from actual model interactions rather than theoretical exposure.
