Edward Conard

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AI Summary. The dissimilarity in occupational mix between recent college graduates aged 20-24 and older workers aged 25-34 has increased slightly faster than in an earlier period, a pattern the authors say could reflect generative AI's effect on early-career employment or simply a slowing labor market. The authors caution that small sample sizes limit the findings.

Martha Gimbel, Molly Kinder, Joshua Kendall, and Maddie Lee Yale University
Date Posted:
Is Database:
Database

The recent rise in a dissimilarity index of the occupational mix between college graduates aged 20 to 24 and those aged 25 to 34 suggests a possible impact of AI on early career workers.

Is AI shifting the jobs recent college graduates hold?

Core argument: The dissimilarity in occupational mix between recent college graduates aged 20–24 and older workers aged 25–34 has increased slightly faster in recent months than in a previous period, which the authors describe as a possible impact of AI on early-career employment.

Figure 9 compares the occupational mix for recent college graduates (ages 20-24) to that of their older counterparts (ages 25-34). If generative AI were in fact substantially changing the labor market for recent college graduates, we would expect to see a growing dissimilarity in the occupational mix between these two groups. The dissimilarity has increased slightly faster in recent months than it did in a previous time period, showing a possible impact of AI on employment of early career workers. It could also simply reflect a slowing labor market. However, our results should be interpreted with caution particularly given small sample sizes.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. The dissimilarity in occupational mix between recent college graduates aged 20–24 and older workers aged 25–34 has increased slightly faster in recent months than in a previous period, which the authors describe as a possible impact of AI on early-career employment.
  2. The faster-rising dissimilarity in occupational mix could also simply reflect a slowing labor market, according to the authors.
  3. The authors caution that their results on the occupational mix of recent college graduates should be interpreted carefully given small sample sizes.

Related Articles:

  • AI and Jobs: The Final Word (Until the Next One) — Unemployment has risen by 0.30 percentage points for the fifth of workers most exposed to artificial intelligence, compared with 0.94 percentage points for the least exposed fifth, leaving no visible AI effect on jobs. The share of workers leaving the labor force within a year is lowest among the most AI-exposed workers and roughly flat.
  • Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence — Using payroll records covering millions of US workers, the authors find employment for workers aged 22–25 in occupations most exposed to artificial intelligence, such as software developers and customer service representatives, declined 6%, while employment for older workers in those occupations rose 6–9%. Employment in less-exposed occupations grew comparably across age groups.
  • Shorting the AI Jobs Apocalypse — Employment for workers aged 22-25 and 26-30 has declined relative to its pre-ChatGPT trend and relative to older workers in the same occupation, but the age groups shown are not equally sized. The authors argue that combining all age groups shows software developer jobs have continued to grow overall.
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