Workers displaced by artificial intelligence and other tech take longer to find new jobs — and when they do, they’re stuck earning less for years, a new study found.
People hit by tech-driven layoffs spend roughly a month out of work and suffer pay cuts of more than 3% on average when they land new roles — losses that compound over time, according to researchers at Goldman Sachs.
Laid-off workers who lost jobs due to tech see earnings growth lag by nearly 10 percentage points compared to those who were never laid off — a pattern Goldman warns could repeat as AI reshapes the labor market.
The damage doesn’t stop at paychecks, the researchers said.
Workers who lose jobs to technology are more likely to face repeated unemployment and delays in major life milestones like buying a home or starting a family, according to the report released Monday.
Much of the hit comes from what economists call “occupational downgrading,” in which displaced workers are pushed into lower-paying, less-skilled roles as the value of their previous experience erodes.
Artificial intelligence is already wiping out roughly 16,000 net jobs per month in the US, with younger workers bearing the brunt of the losses, according to separate Goldman Sachs research.
The bank’s economists estimate that AI-driven automation eliminated about 25,000 jobs each month over the past year, while only about 9,000 were added back through productivity gains and new roles.
The impact has been hardest for Gen Z and entry-level workers, who are disproportionately concentrated in routine white-collar and administrative roles such as data entry, customer service, legal support and billing — jobs AI is best at automating.
In occupations most exposed to AI substitution, the unemployment gap between entry-level workers under 30 and experienced workers ages 31 to 50 has widened sharply, with employees in more AI-exposed roles seeing wage gaps widen by about 3.3 percentage points, according to Goldman’s new analysis.
The problem for Gen Z is that AI-driven job destruction is hitting entry-level roles — ones they are most likely to hold — before other areas of the workforce. New opportunities may take longer to materialize and require different skills.
Not everyone is convinced the damage will last forever.
“No, I do not think they’re permanent,” Marcus Mossberger, a chief market strategy officer, told The Post.
“Technology, generally speaking, does create more jobs than it destroys — but those are different jobs.”
He pointed to a shift in the types of work being done, with artificial intelligence increasingly taking over repetitive, administrative and data-heavy tasks — while leaving more complex, human-driven responsibilities intact.
That means jobs aren’t necessarily disappearing altogether, but being reshaped — forcing workers to either adapt to new roles or risk being pushed into lower-paying work if their existing skills become obsolete.
“I would suggest to you that 100% of jobs will be impacted by AI … not destroyed,” Mossberger told The Post.
“So far… they haven’t been able to find even one job that was one hundred percent destroyed by AI.”
“We have to be constantly retraining,” he continued.
“We have to completely change our mindset and recognize we have to be constantly learning.”
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