The AI Economic Indicators - Stanford Digital Economy Lab

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An up-to-date monitor of AI’s impact on our economy

Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than our ability to understand its economic consequences, and the pace of change is likely to accelerate as adoption spreads across sectors and new capabilities emerge. Yet we lack timely, trusted ways to measure how these changes are affecting work, productivity, and value creation in the economy. Decision-makers currently rely on limited evidence to plan for and react to AI’s impacts–this expanding series is born out of an imperative to remedy that.

The AI Economic Indicators at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab is an expanding series of economic dashboards that connects policymakers, business executives, and individual workers to timely and reliable information on the economic impact of AI. We believe that a better understanding of the technology’s effects will lead to better decisions.

Learn more about the project

Read the latest research note

Explore the dashboards

Canaries Dashboard

A collaboration between ADP Research and the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, we track employment across occupations and worker groups with different levels of AI exposure.

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Takeoff Tracker

Macroeconomic signals associated with advances in AI capabilities and broader economic change.

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Adoption Monitor

Adoption trends for generative AI tools among individuals and firms across available surveys and datasets.

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Selected Results

Employment Index in Canaries Sample by AI Exposure

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We group workers by their AI exposure score, comparing employment trends across these groups. We see modest differences between the five exposure groups, although employment growth is lowest for the most exposed occupations.

Early-Career Employment Index in Canaries Sample by AI Exposure

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We group employees by their age and AI exposure scores, comparing employment trends across these groups. For early-career workers (22-25), the two most exposed groups of occupations see noticeable declines since the introduction of ChatGPT, while the other three occupation groups see growth. These patterns become less stark, and ultimately disappear, as we consider older workers.

Employment Index in Canaries Sample by Age Group

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We contextualize the AI exposure results with aggregate employment trends by age group, pooling all occupations. Consistent with the pattern in the previous chart, early-career workers (22-25) and the next-youngest group (26-30) see modest gains or slight declines. Given the narrow age range for early-career workers (22-25), this group accounts for just 7.0% of employment in our sample at baseline.

Evidence for Takeoff

See Takeoff

We summarize our 12 indicators of takeoff, assessing the extent to which each points towards explosive economic growth. By tracking these series over time, we can contextualize recent changes against longer-running economic trends. We see no decisive evidence of takeoff at present.

Generative AI Use for Work

See Adoption

Self-reported adoption rates of generative AI for work diverge in recent surveys: Hartley et al. report a decrease in adoption, while Gallup and Bick, Blandin, and Deming report continued increases towards 50% adoption.

Current and Expected Firm-Level AI Adoption

Adoption Monitor

U.S. firms lead adoption of AI technologies, but show little gap between current and expected use. In contrast, firms from the UK, Germany, and Australia expect to increase adoption.

Cite the Indicators

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Stanford Digital Economy Lab. "AI Economic Indicators." Accessed [access date]. https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/project/indicators/

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@misc{stanford-indicators,<br>author = {{Stanford Digital Economy Lab}},<br>title = {AI Economic Indicators},<br>year = {[access year]},<br>urldate = {[access-date]},<br>url = {https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/project/indicators/}

The AI Economic Indicators is made possible through the generous support of Schmidt Sciences, the Siegel Family Endowment, and other individual donors.

For a complete list of DEL supporters, please visit our support page.

Cutting through noise and anecdote with up-to-date measurements of AI's impact

Contemporary discourse on the economic impact of AI often relies upon recent news and combining signals across disparate sources, many of which are not designed for this purpose. The Indicators gathers research by scholars from the Lab and other institutions in one location, providing a comprehensive picture of the economic impacts of AI. Additionally, the project regularly updates this work, presenting a collection of low-latency, rich indicators of labor market transition, growth effects, and more.

We combine and regularly update data from government statistical agencies, researchers, and private companies.

The Indicators is organized around five...