Stanford SIEPR: AI's aggregate employment effect is small, but early-career devs and support reps are getting hit.

The policy brief "What is really happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality" drew 182 points and 249 comments on HN (Stanford SIEPR). Drawing on Brynjolfsson, Chandar, and Chen, it reports 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. Recent-graduate unemployment sat at 5.6% in early 2026. The 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.