Stanford SIEPR: AI's Aggregate Employment Effect Is Small, but Early-Career Devs and Support Reps Are Getting Hit
Stanford SIEPR / Hacker News·high signal
A Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research policy brief, "What is really happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality," drew 182 points and 249 comments on HN. Drawing on Brynjolfsson, Chandar and Chen, it reports a measurable employment decline among early-career workers in AI-exposed occupations — software developers and customer service reps specifically — since ChatGPT's 2022 launch, while older workers in the same roles stayed flat or grew, with recent-graduate unemployment at 5.6% in early 2026. The brief's split finding for builders: employment falls for workers who use AI to automate tasks and grows for those who use it to acquire new skills.