Artificial intelligence is changing everything—and fast. Or at least, that is what we’re told. Nowhere are the predictions of the transformative—and potentially disastrous—consequences of AI more dramatic than in the job market. The technology is supposed to be killing coding jobs, rendering white-collar workers obsolete, and upending the relationship between labor and capital.
There’s a slight problem for anyone making these claims, however, and that’s the actual jobs numbers. Amid all the dire talk of an AI jobs apocalypse, the American job market is remarkably stable.
Today we’re adapting an essay from Peter McCrory, Anthropic’s head of economics, on this exact mystery. Peter is uniquely positioned to weigh in. His research team studies how AI is changing economic growth and the shape of the labor market by digging into how people and businesses use AI, alongside broader economic statistics. Is today’s job market just the calm before the storm? Or are predictions of mass joblessness wide of the mark? These aren’t dry economic questions—they get at perhaps the most important issue of our time: what will it mean to live, and work, in an age of superintelligence? —The Editors
I study how AI is reshaping work, including my own. In my job as the head of economics at Anthropic, I’ve personally experienced a transformation of my work. Each new generation of frontier models, like Claude, opens up new possibilities while automating time-consuming tasks that economists do, like estimating statistical models, solving systems of mathematical equations, and creating visualizations. While I’m still directing my own research, the work is increasingly being done by AI. As I watch AI advancing and spreading within the economy—and transforming my own work—I find myself asking, Why hasn’t AI increased unemployment? What will jobs like mine look like in the coming years?
One in five American companies now uses AI in at least one part of their business. In the information sector, that number climbs to two in five. Quality-adjusted AI output—how much more capable the technology got, not just how much it’s used—grew over 2,000 percent per year in both 2024 and 2025. Even though powerful AI is relatively new, these numbers suggest that we should already be seeing some impact on the job market.
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