Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence - Stanford Digital Economy Lab
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Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence
Economics of transformative ai
New measures of the economy
Working Paper
Revised August 12 2026
Date
08/12/2026
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Authors
Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, Ruyu Chen
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Using a sample of high-frequency administrative payroll data from ADP covering millions of U.S. workers through June 2026, we document six facts about the labor market following the widespread adoption of generative AI.
We find no evidence of widespread, economy-wide job displacement.
However, employment of young workers (ages 22–25) in AI-exposed occupations now stands 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with that of their less-exposed peers; experienced workers show no comparable gap.
This divergence has widened steadily since we first documented it in August 2025.
It operates primarily through reduced hiring of young workers rather than increased separations.
Declines are concentrated in occupations where AI usage primarily substitutes for human tasks; where usage primarily complements workers, employment is flat or rising, especially for experienced workers
Adjustment is occurring through employment rather than base compensation.
The divergence is not explained by several prominent alternative factors: it persists when excluding technology firms and computer occupations, when controlling for exposure to interest-rate increases and for remote work, and across alternative measures of AI exposure. These patterns attenuate when controlling for education, show some divergent trends predating generative AI, and are more pronounced in the ADP analysis sample than in national survey benchmarks, with some evidence of consistent patterns in government administrative data. We interpret these facts as early, descriptive indicators—canaries in the coal mine—rather than causal estimates, and we provide a public set of AI Economic Indicators to facilitate ongoing tracking of changes in the economy.
Notes from the authors
Stanford Digital Economy Lab · August 12, 2026
No Widespread Displacement, but the AI Employment Gap for Young Workers Has Widened to 19%
In August 2026, the authors of "Canaries in the Coal Mine?" published a revised version of their paper, with a larger set of data granting a fuller view of AI's impact on employment.
Insights
Economics of transformative ai
Stanford Digital Economy Lab · February 9, 2026
Canaries, Interest Rates, and Timing: More on the Recent Drivers of Employment Changes for Young Workers
In February 2026, the authors of "Canaries in the Coal Mine?" published an update addressing the response to their paper.
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Stanford Digital Economy Lab · October 10, 2025
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Brynjolfsson, E., Chandar, B., & Chen, R. (2025, revised 2026). Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence. Stanford Digital Economy Lab. https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/publications/canaries-in-the-coal-mine/
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@techreport{brynjolfsson2026canaries,<br>author = {Brynjolfsson, Erik and Chandar, Bharat and Chen, Ruyu},<br>title = {Canaries in the Coal Mine? {Six} Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence},<br>year = {2026},<br>month = {August},<br>institution = {Stanford Digital Economy Lab},<br>url = {https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/publications/canaries-in-the-coal-mine/},<br>note = {Revised version; original published 2025, see brynjolfsson2025canaries}
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Erik Brynjolfsson
Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor
Erik Brynjolfsson is one of the world’s leading experts on the economics of technology and artificial intelligence. He is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He also is the Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Professor by Courtesy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Department of Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
One of the most-cited authors on the economics of information, Brynjolfsson was among the first researchers to measure productivity contributions of IT and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles.
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Bharat Chandar
Postdoctoral Fellow
Bharat Chandar is a labor...