Essentially the Canaries in the Coal Mine are that young people can’t get work and have born the biggest brunt of AI automation. While salaries and net employment seem ‘ok’ the youngest cohort in the market is cooked chat.
We find that since the widespread adoption of generative AI, early-career workers (ages 22-25) in the most AI-exposed occupations have experienced a 13 percent relative decline in employment even after controlling for firm-level shocks. In contrast, employment for workers in less exposed fields and more experienced workers in the same occupations has remained stable or continued to grow. We also find that adjustments occur primarily through employment rather than compensation.
Personal observation would track that LinkedIn “Open to work” banners seem especially sticky this time around. Data used was private ADP payroll data and another article diving deep into the augmented vs automated work task separation.
Quote Citation: Erik Brynjolfsson∗ Bharat Chandar† Ruyu Chen‡§¶, “Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence”, August 26, 2025, https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Canaries_BrynjolfssonChandarChen.pdf