AI labor displacement
2 items · chronological order
Is AI putting graduates out of work already?
The most AI-exposed graduate quintile lost 6.6 percentage points of full-time employment between 2022 and 2024, versus 1.5 for the least-exposed, and the class of 2025 most-exposed fields collapsed from 70% to 55%. The sharpest signal isn't the employment data, which is noisy and tech-cycle-confounded: it's computer programming enrollment down 26% in a single year, because prospective students choosing majors are pricing in lock-in years before the labor market clears. The class of 2030 just dropped programming as a major. Tomorrow's senior shortage is being built today.
Opinion | What A.I. Kant Do
Stanford CS enrollment fell for the first time in 20 years over the past 18 months, the only hard data point in a Maureen Dowd op-ed otherwise stacked with five tech CEOs simultaneously elevating humanities. The Washington Post Texas study Dowd herself cites, liberal arts at the bottom of post-college payoff, points the opposite direction. Bilingual operators are the scarce profile (judgment plus AI fluency in the same graduate), and almost no credential currently produces them.