"White-collar workers are getting nervous, with good reason. Sure, 98 percent of college graduates who want a job still have one, and wages are ticking up. Sure, some companies that cite the labor-saving, efficiency-promoting effects of ChatGPT and Claude as they let employees go are just "AI washing" -talking about algorithms to distract from poor managerial decisions. But the labor market for office workers is beginning to shift."
"High-school graduates are finding jobs quicker than college graduates, an unprecedented trend. Occupations susceptible to AI automation have seen sharp spikes in joblessness. Businesses really are shrinking payroll and cutting costs as they deploy AI. In recent weeks, Baker McKenzie, a white-shoe law firm, axed 700 employees, Salesforce sacked hundreds of workers, and the auditing firm KPMG negotiated lower fees with its own auditor."
"Maybe algorithm-driven changes will happen slowly, giving workers plenty of time to adjust. Maybe white-collar types have 12 to 18 months left. Maybe the AI-related job carnage will be contained to a sliver of the economy. Maybe we should be more worried about a stock-market bubble than an AI-driven labor revolution. I don't think anyone knows what will happen, or even what is happening now. AI technology is changing at an exponential pace, and changing the workforce in a thousand hard-to-parse ways."
White-collar employment is starting to shift as AI tools are deployed across businesses, with college graduates increasingly represented among the unemployed. High-school graduates are finding jobs faster than college graduates, an unprecedented reversal. Roles susceptible to AI-driven automation have experienced sharp increases in joblessness, and firms are reducing payrolls and cutting costs while implementing AI. Recent large layoffs include Baker McKenzie and Salesforce, and major firms like KPMG are renegotiating fees. Rapid prototyping using generative AI eroded market confidence when a clone workflow platform was built in under an hour. Uncertainty persists about the speed and scale of AI-driven labor disruption.
Read at The Atlantic
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