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Stanford Economist Now Believes an AI Job Apocalypse Is Unlikely (washingtonpost.com) 111

Posted by EditorDavid from the apocalypse-then dept.
"There is still no sign of economy-wide job destruction," says economist Erik Brynjolfsson. Working with researchers at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Brynjolfsson has determined an AI "job apocalypse" is unlikely, reports the Washington Post, "even though it will likely impact entry-level jobs."

And Brynjolfsson "predicts that demand for experienced workers such as senior coders will still be high even if AI takes on more routine knowledge and coding work in the future." Earlier this month, Brynjolfsson and his colleagues at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab updated their widely publicized report, "Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence," to reflect that they do not see widespread, economy-wide job displacement associated with AI...

Brynjolfsson: What has moved on the upside is productivity. Nonfarm business productivity growth is running over 2 percent, the best sustained stretch since the late-1990s boom... The gains show up years after the investment, and they're starting to show up... By 2030, we will have enormously more capable AI, meaningfully faster productivity growth and an unemployment rate that looks unremarkable — somewhere in its historical range. That surprises people, but it's what the mechanism implies... [T]he technology is becoming much more powerful, and it's going to be even more powerful.

Secondly, there are huge implications for business and the economy, including some increases in living standards, but also, potentially, job disruption. And then, thirdly, we must act now to address this gap. We can't just sit back and wait for the tsunami to hit us. And one of the things we can do is put in place institutions, policies and research to make the technology more complementary — using AI to complement people so it creates more jobs. A common misconception among business managers is AI, in order to be effective, has to reduce jobs. That's just not true. You can use AI to increase employment and productivity at the same time. It's kind of a win-win...

Right now, tax policy is very skewed toward favoring capital versus labor — and, as a consequence, a lot of entrepreneurs and managers, they're basically being guided by the federal government to replace workers with machines. And I don't think that's necessarily what we'd like to have happen. From an economist's perspective, what you want to be doing is not mimicking and replacing things. You want to be extending and complementing — have humans do new things they never could have done before.
He acknowledges "real, persistent and widening" effects on entry-level jobs, with a labor market "closing the on-ramp for people starting their careers... If companies don't hire people at the base of the pyramid, then they're not going to have those people later when they need them."

One he points out that one company is instead using AI to speed up its training of young employees.
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Stanford Economist Now Believes an AI Job Apocalypse Is Unlikely More

Stanford Economist Now Believes an AI Job Apocalypse Is Unlikely

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  • Death of Expertise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by irreverentdiscourse ( 1922968 ) on Sunday August 23, 2026 @12:49PM (#66303342)

    The apocalypse isn't job replacement, it's job training. ALL of the entry level jobs in most industries are going to be replaced by AI, and there will be no jobs available to train up the next set of tier 2 and 3 employees. The apprenticeship model that most of the world relies on is going to collapse. It will take a decade to realize the losses and by then it will be too late to train replacements.

    • Re:Death of Expertise (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sethra ( 55187 ) on Sunday August 23, 2026 @01:44PM (#66303400)

      I expect the prevailing thinking among the so called "tech giants" is that before the loss of level 1 talent would normally impact level 2, AI will be replacing level 2, and so on up the chain.

      It's a risky gamble but the end game is clear - the job market WILL be disrupted and the ramifications of so many displaced workers may provoke an uprising.

      • I don't believe either of these will happen. I think it's more likely to lower the barrier to entry. This was, in fact, exactly why the Luddites did what they did. In my case, AI has been a useful learning tool for fields I have no expertise in, or adjacent ones I've never touched. Sometimes it's just an incredibly powerful search engine, and sometimes it leads by example. It's because of AI that I have started to do frontend work -- without it I'd have needed to take a course, and even then it would have t

        • Re: Death of Expertise (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ambrandt12 ( 6486220 ) on Sunday August 23, 2026 @02:54PM (#66303552)

          Except if you lower the entry-point to get to Lvl 2 while getting rid of Lvl 1, then you get total morons who wouldn't even be considered for Lvl 1 doing Lvl 2 work... so, what did all that accomplish?

          Higher labor demand? What labor? There's less and less actual labor (y'know... us blue-collar workers) regular jobs and more and more office jobs for those who have the fancy piece of paper.
          How do you increase demand for labor when manufacturers are looking to have less meatsacks around by AI-enabled automating away more and more jobs and having more jobs done by one person? Of course, us blue-collars could go get us some of that edumacation, but not many of us have $200k sitting around, don't qualify for scholarships, can't afford to have another loan (the ones for the house and ten-year old truck dun used up muh credit), and don't have the time while working our lower-paying jobs and providing for the family of lil' uns'.

          irreverentdiscourse and Sethra both have it right.

          • Except if you lower the entry-point to get to Lvl 2 while getting rid of Lvl 1, then you get total morons who wouldn't even be considered for Lvl 1 doing Lvl 2 work... so, what did all that accomplish?

            Or, more likely, they both just change in ways you never expected. How precisely they change depends on the job, but I don't foresee businesses putting people into jobs they're unqualified for any more than they already do. It just doesn't make business sense, and any who do that will feel the consequences of it one way or another. If the economy worked the way you seem to think it does, we wouldn't have a functional economy right now.

            Higher labor demand? What labor? There's less and less actual labor (y'know... us blue-collar workers) regular jobs and more and more office jobs for those who have the fancy piece of paper.

            Actually that youtube video I linked addresses this. I did put it there f

          • These total morons basically got rid of the need for experts as ai made them look good.

            Even worse is slightly smart folks who know enough can make things that took a team of developers years ago.

            Ai basically gets rid of the experts and raises the morons.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by rally2xs ( 1093023 )

      Last week I was struggling with sharing my main computer's resources with 3 other windows 11 machines. I used ChatGPT to navigate the details and got it done under the AI's direction. It all works now.

      Then it hit me after the AI offered me the equivalent of a network engineering and Windows 11 systems administration set of courses, giving me the number of hours it thought it would take me to learn it, and so forth. I remember the Win 11 sys admin knowledge was estimated at 1000 hours. (wow). But treati

    • Re:Death of Expertise (Score:5, Insightful)

      by snowshovelboy ( 242280 ) on Monday August 24, 2026 @01:44AM (#66303996)

      Its already too late. New grads used AI to cheat on their homework, so they aren't qualified for entry level positions anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I agree. But what this means is the death of low and medium expertise levels. People that get high expertise have always found ways to do it. They are just pretty rare (maybe 10% of all CS/IT people), and that makes them expensive. On the plus-side, we have been producing way too much (mostly crappy) software anyways and we have used way too high-maintenance server and software systems in addition. The 10% are quite enough to keep things running and maintained once all the cruft and crap is removed from ser

    • In w40k terms we are now in the age of technology, and once AI takes over nobody will understand basic stuff anymore, and will rely on weird pseudo-religious chants and sacraments to keep machines running.

      Dont believe me? What does EVERYONE do when the internet is not working? They perform the holy rite of the power cycle.. without understanding anything that is happening. It has already started..

      GenX and older Millenials will be the last tech priests, until they are gone, then nobody will understand any te

      • "w40k"?

        "Hey, Siri... why can't you connect to the network? Hey Siri, can you tell me why that moron toppled the cell phone tower? Hey Siri... how do I use you again?"

        Remember that far future-flung movie, WALL-E? I can totally see that's what humans will end up being in 20 years time... the second the internet has a hiccup (cell tower goes down, local broadband goes down, you walk into a tunnel)... they start running around "what do I do? the sky is falling!"

        Remember the good ol' days where if you didn't

    • ALL of the entry level jobs in most industries are going to be replaced by AI, and there will be no jobs available to train up the next set of tier 2 and 3 employees

      Ummm....don't we call this college? You know, getting good skills and training so you don't have to start at the lowest possible level and have the capacity to move up quickly...?

      • ALL of the entry level jobs in most industries are going to be replaced by AI, and there will be no jobs available to train up the next set of tier 2 and 3 employees

        Ummm....don't we call this college? You know, getting good skills and training so you don't have to start at the lowest possible level and have the capacity to move up quickly...?

        Higher Ed - that is, credentialed curriculum and teaching - in the USA has been on life support for 10 years. It has been steadily devoured by outsourcing to Ed Tech corporations. There's been tremendous consolidation into near monopoly in the education sector. A student taking College Algebra at Rutgers University and a student taking College Algebra at Central Montana Community College and a student taking College Algebra at University of Phoenix, are very likely to be using the same Ed Tech platforms, wi

        • The education crash is happening, and the emptying-out will take less than 10 years. The rope is already around its neck. The last remaining chair leg holding it up right now is the fact of most employers still requiring 4-year college degrees for everything, even roles like an entry-level accounts-payable clerk

          I think you've lost your connection to reality.

          Entry-level accounts payable clerk isn't even a thing any more, let alone a thing that requires a 4-year degree.

          Students who want to actually learn something are increasingly opting for in-person experiences. Online degrees are increasingly suspicious as you can have an AI do the whole course for you.

          Yes, there's been amazing consolidation in ed tech but schools are stepping back their spending on ed tech because they can do it themselves for cheaper and f

      • "You know, getting good skills and training so you don't have to start at the lowest possible level and have the capacity to move up quickly"

        This isn't really a thing anymore. College grads already have to do entry level work until they learn actual industry specific knowledge.

  • The inability for America to comprehend nuance is starting to really piss me off.

    Yeah we're not all immediately going to lose our jobs.

    That's not the problem. The problem is we already are in a scenario where we have two good jobs for every five people. A good job here is something that lets you afford a one-bedroom apartment by yourself in a city that consistently has employment.

    Oh here is where a bunch of people dig up lower cost apartments and places with little or no economic activity or job

    • Pretty much. The rich and powerful figured out how to manipulate the sentiment of a large portion of the US. They convinced Americans that acting in their own best interest is playing into the hands of some boogeyman named Socialism or Washington Elite. Even the people who taught me to think critically as a child were swallowed by the MAGA wave.

      The political opponents that should charge to the rescue are tripping over their own feet in an orgy of ineptitude.

      I forget this was an AI thread. Sorry.

      • It was political correctness when I was a lad, then it was sjw and now it's woke. I think woke is running its course and being replaced by dei. But there is room enough in the right wing's head for both since God knows there's nothing else in there.

        What's going to be fun is in 2032 when Trump's going into his fourth term and all these old fucking farts who sold us out so they could freak out about trans girls in sports and drag queens reading books lose $500 a month of social security money and become h
        • Live what you preach. Commit suicide when you hit sixty five, because you will suck so bad by then you will pollute everything.

          Or you could do the rest of us a favor and off yourself now, you whiny ass.

          • If you would stop being such a dumb mother fucker and stop voting for pedophiles because trans girls make you feel icky and give you a boner at the same time then we could fix all this shit.

            There is absolutely no reason why everything can't be fine but guys like you are so fucking stupid you think you're part of the in group and that when the shit hits the fan Trump has your back. He hates you. You disgust him. When you showed up on January 6th to make him King he was pissed off how low class and how m
            • This was very well said.

        • Theres a psychological hook with these dudes that is nefariously hard to correct for.

          Theres pretty well documented evidence that peoples voting preferences correlate strongly with certain brain structures and essentially the more fearful you are, the more likely your going to vote right wing. The thing is, the people running the show with the current clown-car administration know this. They know that by constantly creating a climate of fear and uncertainty, with a constant parade of devils and outrages, the

    • That's not the problem. The problem is we already are in a scenario where we have two good jobs for every five people. A good job here is something that lets you afford a one-bedroom apartment by yourself in a city that consistently has employment.

      Apparently you and those like you, ONLY consider a city to be the equivalent of of NYC....which is quite the outlier.

      Most other cities across the US, with plenty of good jobs, allow you to afford MUCH better than a 1 room apartment.

  • Same old, same old (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )
    Every time something disruptive comes a long, the doomers claim " No one will have a jerb any more!"

    But just like every disruptive thing in the past, things just change, not ending up with mass unemployment and people starving in the streets.

    We just adjust our skillsets, and move on. I've changed my skillset several times since I first entered the workforce in the 70's. Possible issues? Ya gotta enjoy learning. But that hasn't actually changed.

    Now, for people who want to get their first job, and ha

    • There are people starving on the streets NOW

  • interesting video with Grace Blakeley

    The Myth of Free Markets: Blakeley argues that neoliberalism did not create free markets; instead, it established an economy dominated by large monopolies and reinforced by state intervention to protect corporate interests (13:52 - 14:30). Moral Hazard: The discussion highlights how governments and central banks frequently bail out large financial institutions and corporations (like Boeing), shielding them from the consequences of their own risky behavior (18:28, 23:28 -

  • The definition of "job" needs tightening (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Sunday August 23, 2026 @01:43PM (#66303396)
    It seems that in all the news about "jobs" in the US, the definition used is "job == someone does something for money". Which results in completely different reporting than if the definition of "job" used was "working position that dependably earns someone a livable income". I understand that for economists, a world where every human works 3 gig-economy jobs may appear 3 times as good as one where humans need just one job to make enough money for a living, but most people do not fancy a future where all the (previously well paid) jobs are done by some robot.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )

      "Economist" should be one of the easiest jobs to replace with AI. Ir's not as though they ever do much other than says whatever their employer wants them to say.

      • The fact that the bump in the road of the 2008 financial crisis didn't result in a 1930s style depression is because economics has found out how to prevent that outcome. Ignoring that fact is foolish.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 0123456 ( 636235 )

          It's because the government threw vast amounts of cheap credit into the economy which turned a short-term crash into a long-term depression where kids can't afford houses and the cost of living is increasing by far more than the fake inflation figures economists churn out.

          And it's also why we now have a Potemkin economy where nothing really works and we pretend to get rich by selling houses to each other at ever-increasing prices.

          The 1930s depression was also caused by economists who refused to let things c

    • It seems that in all the news about "jobs" in the US, the definition used is "job == someone does something for money". Which results in completely different reporting than if the definition of "job" used was "working position that dependably earns someone a livable income".

      Livable income is money. And I suspect you are one who says - "From each, according to their ability, to each according to their needs. I understand that for economists, a world where every human works 3 gig-economy jobs may appear 3 times as good as one where humans need just one job to make enough money for a living, but most people do not fancy a future where all the (previously well paid) jobs are done by some robot.

      Did you know in America, we're all starving in the streets, because no one has any mon

      • That's some serious verbal diarrhea...

        • That's some serious verbal diarrhea...

          You could have disagreed, But you put the pinnacle of your intellect on display for the world to see.

          Honeychild, give mommy and daddy their computer back, because 5th grader playground insults are so 5th grade.

    • Without doing something for some money, you can't buy the bare necessities to survive.

      Working in a position that dependable earns someone a (sometimes, comfortably) livable income, typically refers to someone having a degree and all that.

      Gig-economy jobs can work, but once too many people are out of work because of _Progress_, that 'too many people' will be fighting eachother to get those few gig jobs.

  • My job is now reviewing AI code (Score:3)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Sunday August 23, 2026 @01:46PM (#66303410)
    My job is now creating good instructions for the AI then reviewing code written by the AI.

    The only way I can do work that is because I spent years writing code.

    How does someone now in college prepare themselves to do my job by forcing themselves to *write* code, knowing an AI can write it better 9 times out of 10 ?

    I hope CS professors are focusing on that.

    • My job is now creating good instructions for the AI then reviewing code written by the AI. The only way I can do work that is because I spent years writing code.

      How does someone now in college prepare themselves to do my job by forcing themselves to *write* code, knowing an AI can write it better 9 times out of 10 ?

      My best guess is that as time progresses, and code writing becomes better, that you serve as a transition person. Likely by the time you retire, checking the code will be less of an issue.

      • Or I might only choose to identify as a transition person. My pronouns are revert/rejected.

        • Or I might only choose to identify as a transition person. My pronouns are revert/rejected.

          My pronouns are majesty and eminence. You may refer to my as "Your Majesty".

          And how DARE anyone tell me those are not pronouns! I can define my pronouns as I wish, and others must accept and cherish that.

          • Seriously, I think politicians on the left are dropping this nonsense, and DEI everywhere, and Pro-pal lunacy. We reached peek woke.

            I wonder if that is the end of it, and the center left move back to somewhere near the center again, or are they just keeping it quiet until elected because they know normal people realize how STUPID it all is ?

            And in, say 10 years time, will the people who fell for it look back on these demented times and realize how gullible they were ?

            • Seriously, I think politicians on the left are dropping this nonsense, and DEI everywhere, and Pro-pal lunacy. We reached peek woke.

              I agree. The postmodern deconstructionism was to the point where it was denying biology. A few of my more left wing female relatives cannot define what a woman or even male or female is, and they are firmly convinced that men playing women's sports is a natural thing, because men and women are physically identical.

              They still believe that it is important to transition as early as possible, with drugs and surgery, and that we must cherish children's right to change their sex, even though DNA testing defin

              • The problem is the call to the center doesn't have much in the way of good rallying cries.

                "Don't hate those people who disagree with you ! Don't discriminate ... for any reason ! You have problems ... but mainy are to blame on yourselves ! Rich people have to pay ... but only a fair share ! Some people can't work ... but those who can work should ! Illegal immigrants are criminals ... but also people !"

            • Seriously, I think politicians on the left are dropping this nonsense, and DEI everywhere, and Pro-pal lunacy. We reached peek woke.

              We reached peak woke four years ago. DEI is dead. The corpse is still twitching in a few corners of academia, but that's about it.

              I wonder if that is the end of it, and the center left move back to somewhere near the center again, or are they just keeping it quiet until elected because they know normal people realize how STUPID it all is?

              I don't think the center left ever moved. The center left just didn't push back against the far left because why alienate them? I mean, the far left is perfectly capable of just deciding to sit out the elections. A non-trivial number did exactly that in 2024 because they were mad that Biden didn't take a hard line with Israel. And given that the GOP has turned insane...

              IM

    • Are you needing to make less and less interventions? If so, you may be redundant soon...

    • There's no shortcut to experience. "Debugging is twice as hard as writing code" - why do people think this does not apply to reviewing? If you can't write the code, you can't review it effectively. The moment the code doesn't do 100% what you want, you have to debug it anyway. Students have to write shitty code, to understand why it's shitty, and then improve it. They need to hone their skills. There's no shortcut to that, as the premise is you spend time honing them, which includes failing as much as succe

    • We are not. Sorry. You are fucked and you did it yourself by voting us down this path with every tiny decision you make supporting it (except for that petition against a local data center that lets you pat yourself on the back despite you actually doing 100s of bad actions.)

      For starters, we do not know what to address in a rapidly changing landscape. I can tell you that CAPTCHA and plumbing are tasks AI can't do...

      You have kids who can't think or learn backed up by parents who don't even know how to be dece

  • I read TFS. "We canâ(TM)t just sit back and wait for the tsunami to hit us" does not match the title of "apocalypse unlikely"

  • Where do Senior Developers come from? Thin air? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JimMcc ( 31079 ) on Sunday August 23, 2026 @02:38PM (#66303512)

    I keep reading that AI will be replacing junior positions and that senior positions will still be in demand. Where will the next generation of senior developers come from? How will the develop their skills if AI is removing the junior roles?

    • Of course, thin air (also known as: the guy who got the senior title because his dad is golfing buddies with the current senior) is where they come from.

  • Except the continued layoffs of tens of thousands of people, the multitudes losing their homes because they haven't been able to find a job, etc. etc.

    Nero fiddles while Rome burns.

  • Really. Truly. For SURE this time.

    Look, depending on who you ask, the sky is falling, the market is going to collapse next week, the icecaps are
    melting, the Earth is overheating, sea levels are rising, the Rapture is upon us, some bubble is about to pop, the Singularity
    is near, AI will enslave us all and we are living in the end times.

    There doesn't seem to be a day that goes by that some doomer isn't out there spouting a story about some apocalypse
    level catastrophe that is right around the corner.

    ( Coinc

  • Collapse generally takes decades or centuries. For the current global interconnected civilization it will likely take longer, as this civilizatoin has been quite stable since the Great Divergence of the 15th or 16th century.

    Reliable accounts of people during a civilization collapse are essentially nonexistent, and the retelling likely benefits from hindsight. That said, it seems unlikely that anyone living through it would have been able to confidently identity a collapse that was due to systemic human-caus

    • Jane Jacobs wrote a great book on civilization collapse in 2004 titled "Dark Age Ahead":
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      "Dark Age Ahead is a 2004 book by Jane Jacobs describing what she sees as the decay of five key "pillars" in "North America": community and family, higher education, science and technology, taxes and government responsiveness to citizen's needs, and self-regulation by the learned professions. She argues that this decay threatens to create a Dark Age unless the

    • I disagree, the globalization into a single interconnected economy means it will fail quicker. There is no other economy to use to prop up a faltering one. In the past if one country had a collapse in the value of their currency they used that of another while recovering. Currencies are too interconnected now, if one is falling it is because the others are as well.

      We have homogenized into too many single points of failure. Specifially with manufacturing.

      That Great Divergence is over, we can thank the
  • Jobs aren't going away because AI is not raising productivity. Between hallucinations and blind mistakes, AI has to have human tenders to fix its garbage output. The humans are still employed, but instead of doing the creative work, they are demoted to butt-wipers for the leaky-streaky AI. The AI "boom" is all the companies spending money building infrastructure for an AI future that isn't coming. Hopefully as the Fear Of Missing Out wears off, and companies rsalize AI is not improving profits, they will du

    • Engineers are busy with:
      1 - generating plans, generating code, and then rounds and rounds of testing, debugging and fixing bugs.
      3 - improving tooling support for LLMs. Generating skills, APIs, MCPs etc.
      2 - optimizing to reduce token usage
      The execs said they wanted to see a 25% increase in productivity, and the CTO of course "delivered" on that goal without actually having a way to measure it, so now that we're 25% more productive we can take on that much more work.
      If we keep making s

  • However as they're all buzzword parrots that works on "good news"/"bad news", people will keep getting fired, even if it kills the company.
    It's all a number of stock go up, not reality.
    This is specially true when the company deal with highly specialized jobs, such as gamedev or engineering etc..
    Firing the "john carmack" of the company makes the stock go up.

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