Labour data
Stanford payroll data shows AI's hiring freeze on young workers widening, not stabilising
The employment gap for 22-to-25-year-olds in AI-exposed jobs grew from 15% to 19% in a year, and the mechanism is reduced hiring, not layoffs.
- Stanford's Digital Economy Lab, using ADP payroll data, finds employment among workers aged 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations is 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with less-exposed peers — up from a 15% gap a year earlier.
- The researchers find no widespread, economy-wide displacement; the effect is concentrated specifically in young, inexperienced workers.
- The adjustment operates through reduced hiring of young workers rather than increased separations of those already employed.
- Employment fell in occupations built on codified knowledge — the kind textbooks and documentation can teach — while employment among experienced workers in tacit-knowledge occupations held flat or rose.
