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AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

(www.cnbc.com)
440 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 28 Aug 25 14:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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kerblang ◴[28 Aug 25 22:27 UTC] No.45057750[source]▶
High interest rates + tariff terror -> less investment -> less jobs

But let's blame AI

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esafak ◴[29 Aug 25 00:37 UTC] No.45058645[source]▶
Let's read the paper instead: https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/...

It presents a difference-in-differences (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences) design that exploits staggered adoption of generative AI to estimate the causal effect on productivity. It compares headcount over time by age group across several occupations, showing significant differentials across age groups.

Page 3: "We test for a class of such confounders by controlling for firm-time effects in an event study regression, absorbing aggregate firm shocks that impact all workers at a firm regardless of AI exposure. For workers aged 22-25, we find a 12 log-point decline in relative employment for the most AI-exposed quintiles compared to the least exposed quintile, a large and statistically significant effect."

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1. samrus ◴[29 Aug 25 09:08 UTC] No.45061857[source]▶
Interesting technique, that DID. But it assumes the non treatment factors would affect both the treatment group and control group equally, that the effect would scale linearly. If the treatment group was more exposed to the non-treatment factors, then an increase could account for a larger difference than the one seem at time 1. Idk which other industry they used as the controll group but interest rates could have a superlinear effect on tech as compared to on that, so the difference of difference would be explained by the non-treatment factor too