Technology usually creates jobs for young, skilled workers. Will AI do the same? | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Skip to content ↓

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Search websites, locations, and people

See More Results

Suggestions or feedback?

Enter keywords to search for news articles:

Submit

Browse By

Topics

View All →

Explore:

Machine learning

Sustainability

Startups

Black holes

Classes and programs

Departments

View All →

Explore:

Aeronautics and Astronautics

Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Architecture

Political Science

Mechanical Engineering

Centers, Labs, & Programs

View All →

Explore:

Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)

Picower Institute for Learning and Memory

Media Lab

Lincoln Laboratory

Schools

School of Architecture + Planning

School of Engineering

School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Sloan School of Management

School of Science

MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

View all news coverage of MIT in the media →

Listen to audio content from MIT News →

Subscribe to MIT newsletter →

Close

Breadcrumb

MIT News

Technology usually creates jobs for young, skilled workers. Will AI do the same?

Technology usually creates jobs for young, skilled workers. Will AI do the same?

A new study of the postwar U.S. shows which kinds of workers historically filled new tech-enabled jobs.

Peter Dizikes<br>MIT News

Publication Date:

May 21, 2026

Press Inquiries

Press Contact:

Abby

Abazorius

Email:<br>abbya@mit.edu

Phone:<br>617-253-2709

MIT News Office

Media Download

↓ Download Image

Caption:

In the postwar U.S., as Autor and his colleagues examined in granular detail, new forms of work have tended to benefit college graduates under 30 more than anyone else.

Credits:

Image: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT; iStock

*Terms of Use:

Images for download on the MIT News office website are made available to non-commercial entities, press and the general public under a<br>Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license.<br>You may not alter the images provided, other than to crop them to size. A credit line must be used when reproducing images; if one is not provided<br>below, credit the images to "MIT."

Close

Caption:

In the postwar U.S., as Autor and his colleagues examined in granular detail, new forms of work have tended to benefit college graduates under 30 more than anyone else.

Credits:

Image: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT; iStock

Previous image<br>Next image

At any given time, technology does two things to employment: It replaces traditional jobs, and it creates new lines of work. Machines replace farmers, but enable, say, aeronautical engineers to exist. So, if tech creates new jobs, who gets them? How well do they pay? How long do new jobs remain new, before they become just another common task any worker can do?<br>A new study of U.S. employment led by MIT labor economist David Autor sheds light on all these matters. In the postwar U.S., as Autor and his colleagues show in granular detail, new forms of work have tended to benefit college graduates under 30 more than anyone else.<br>“We had never before seen exactly who is doing new work,” Autor says. “It’s done more by young and educated people, in urban settings.”<br>The study also contains a powerful large-scale insight: A lot of innovation-based new work is driven by demand. Government-backed expansion of research and manufacturing in the 1940s, in response to World War II, accounted for a huge amount of new work, and new forms of expertise.<br>“This says that wherever we make new investments, we end up getting new specializations,” Autor says. “If you create a large-scale activity, there’s always going to be an opportunity for new specialized knowledge that’s relevant for it. We thought that was exciting to see.”<br>The paper, “What Makes New Work Different from More Work?” is forthcoming in the Annual Review of Economics. The authors are Autor; Caroline Chin, a doctoral student in MIT’s Department of Economics; Anna M. Salomons, a professor at Tilburg University’s Department of Economics and Utrecht University’s School of Economics; and Bryan Seegmiller PhD ’22, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.<br>And yes, learning about new work, and the kinds of workers who obtain it, might be relevant to the spread of artificial intelligence — although, in Autor’s estimation, it is too soon to tell just how AI will affect the workplace.<br>“People are really worried that AI-based automation is going to erode specific tasks more rapidly,” Autor observes. “Eroding tasks is not the same thing as eroding jobs, since many jobs involve a lot of tasks. But we’re all saying: Where is the new work going to come from? It’s so important, and we know little about it. We don’t know what it will be, what it will look like, and who will be able to do it.”<br>“If everyone is an expert, then no one is an expert”<br>The four co-authors also collaborated on a previous major...