Study finds job-finding and switching fell most for AI-exposed US workers
A new NBER paper puts the AI-driven rise in the natural rate of unemployment at 0.1-0.2 points; small, unreviewed, worth tracking revisions.
Original event 2026-09-21
A new NBER conference paper estimates the US natural rate of unemployment has risen by about 0.1-0.2 percentage points since LLMs were introduced, with what the authors call considerable uncertainty.
The paper, by Hie Joo Ahn and Nicholas A. Carollo, combines CPS and JOLTS data with AI exposure measures from OpenAI and adoption measures from Lightcast. Workers with high AI exposure and adoption have seen larger declines in job-finding and job-switching rates than other groups, while within-job activity switching has increased noticeably.
The authors argue LLM-driven reallocation has operated mainly through within-firm task reorganization rather than mass layoffs. Note this is an unreviewed conference paper, and the magnitude estimate is sensitive to model specification.