AI Isn't Killing Jobs Overall, But It's Already Cutting Pay and Squeezing New Grads

The mass layoffs everyone predicted didn't happen. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in May 2025 that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs. OpenAI's Sam Altman said whole job categories would disappear. A year and change later, according to the Guardian, the carnage never showed up.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data backs that up. Job openings jumped by 731,000 to 7.618 million in April, according to Breitbart's reporting on the JOLTS report, blowing past Wall Street forecasts. Professional and business services alone accounted for 668,000 of that increase, roughly 91% of the total gain. This sector is hiring, not collapsing.

Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research data cited by the Guardian shows the unemployment rate for the 20% of workers most exposed to AI rose 0.77 percentage points since 2022, actually less than the 0.85-point rise for the least AI-exposed workers. Erika McEntarfer, a fellow at Stanford's institute, told the Guardian the pattern looks like earlier tech shifts: "It took decades for the computer revolution to fully transform labor markets in the workforce, and what we're seeing right now looks a lot like that."

So no mass extinction event. But something is happening, and it's showing up in paychecks and in who gets hired at all, not in total job counts.

The Wage Story Nobody Predicted

Forbes reported on research from Apollo Global Management showing real wage growth in AI-exposed occupations lagged behind less-exposed occupations by 6.7 percentage points since 2023, with no statistically significant drop in employment. Apollo's researchers called it "wage compression rather than employment displacement." The jobs are still there. The raises aren't.

Separate research cited by Forbes found starting wages at AI-exposed companies fell 4.5% after ChatGPT's launch, with junior and mid-level pay taking the hit while senior compensation held steady. The pattern is consistent: AI isn't firing people wholesale, it's making certain skills worth less, and companies are passing that discount straight to the paycheck instead of the pink slip.

Entry-Level Workers Are Getting Squeezed Hardest

This is where the pain is concentrated. NPR spoke with Irene Chang, a Georgia Tech engineering graduate who has submitted roughly 450 job applications since last September and landed about 19 interviews, zero offers. Jacqueline Kline, a Florida State graduate with a master's in communications, applied to more than 500 entry-level jobs since December with no success.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York put the unemployment rate for recent graduates aged 22 to 27 at 5.7% as of June, well above the 4.1% rate for all workers, according to NPR. A ZipRecruiter survey found 47% of recent graduates believe AI has already affected hiring in their field.

Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson told NPR the evidence is building that AI is a real factor, not the whole story. His research, using payroll data, found early-career workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles like software development and marketing have seen a 16% relative employment decline since late 2022, compared to older workers in the same fields and workers in jobs that resist automation, like home health aides and construction workers.

NPR's grads make a real case that something specific to their generation and their job search is broken, and the Brynjolfsson data backs that up. It's not just anxiety talking. At the same time, NPR itself notes economists caution that remote work shifts and the unwinding of pandemic-era overhiring are also in the mix. AI is part of the story. It is not proven to be the whole story.

Workers Are Already Bracing for It

The anxiety is measurable even where the job losses aren't. A Monster survey of 1,020 employed U.S. workers, reported by HR Chief, found 54% would take a pay cut in exchange for stronger job security. Twenty-eight percent said they'd tolerate a cut of 5% or more, and 11% would e