new york
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Many workers fear that artificial intelligence will come to their jobs, a belief supported by warnings from AI leaders and anecdotes from a recent Federal Reserve report.
But new research has found that the opposite is true, at least for now.
According to Vanguard, jobs with significant exposure to AI automation are growing faster than before COVID-19 and even faster than all other occupations.
The findings don't necessarily signal that all is well for workers concerned about AI disrupting their careers. Some companies have recently reported cutting some positions because AI can automate tasks for entry-level employees or make current employees more efficient.
But at least for now, there is no evidence that this technology is causing widespread damage.
“Broadly speaking, we haven't seen any evidence that employment is declining in jobs exposed to AI,” Vanguard senior economist Adam Sickling told CNN in a phone interview.
Vanguard's analysis focused on about 140 occupations considered most likely to be replaced by AI, including clerks, typists, human resources assistants, law clerks, and data scientists.
These are the jobs with the highest percentage of working time performing tasks that AI systems could potentially automate with a high degree of autonomy.
In other words, these positions are most likely to shrink as AI explodes.
But that hasn't happened. That's not necessarily because AI isn't a long-term threat to jobs, but because the technology isn't quite there yet.
In fact, Vanguard found that employment in occupations with high exposure to AI increased by 1.7% in the post-COVID-19 period from mid-2023 to mid-2025.
This is faster than the 1% increase in these jobs pre-COVID-19 (2015-2019).
By contrast, employment growth has slowed in all other occupations, according to Vanguard.
Sickling said he intentionally did not compare recent employment trends to the 2020-2022 period because that was a very unusual time in the job market and an inappropriate baseline.
Vanguard found similar results for wages.
According to Vanguard, real wage growth (adjusted for inflation) for occupations with high exposure to AI was just 0.1% before COVID-19. However, after the coronavirus, that percentage accelerated to 3.8%.
By comparison, all other occupations with less exposure to AI saw a smaller acceleration in real wage growth, from 0.5% pre-pandemic to 0.7% post-pandemic.
This discovery is surprising. If AI is truly hurting the job market, it should show up in the form of lower salaries.
“AI may be starting to change our workflows, but its role in explaining the recent slowdown in employment growth has been overstated,” Vanguard said in its analysis.
All of this data stands in contrast to the doomsday warnings from some economists and CEOs, including AI leaders.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned in May that half of white-collar entry-level jobs could be eliminated by AI, and unemployment could soar to 20% in the near future.
“It's disturbing that a wide range of the public, politicians and members of Congress are not fully aware of what's going on,” Amodei told CNN's Anderson Cooper. “We have to act now. We can't just sleepwalk into it.”
Some research from the Federal Reserve also shows that AI is starting to impact the job market.
For example, the November Fed Beige Book, which compiles anecdotes from companies across the country, notes that “several companies indicated that artificial intelligence was replacing entry-level positions or making existing employees sufficiently productive to suppress new hires.”
One manufacturer reduced the size of its office staff by 15% by relying on AI tools and automation, according to the Cleveland Fed.
“Many stakeholders noted that even modest adoption of AI could result in the failure to fill some jobs or skip hiring classes for entry-level workers,” the Philadelphia Fed said in Beige Book.
Vanguard's analysis focused on entry-level workers, who are finding it increasingly difficult to find work in today's job market.
If AI was disproportionately harming young workers, Vanguard's internal data on the 5 million participants in Vanguard-managed 401(k) plans would reveal it.
But Sickling says that's not the case. The percentage of workers ages 21 to 25 enrolled in a Vanguard 401(K) remains relatively high.
Some tech leaders are pushing back against the pessimism that AI will take away jobs.
Cisco President Jeethu Patel told CNN in August that in the long run, “the stupidest thing a company can do” is refuse to hire entry-level employees because of AI.
“I disagree with people who think that in about five years, humanity will be obsolete and we'll have nothing to do and we'll just be sitting on the beach,” Patel said at the Ai4 AI conference in Las Vegas.
So why isn’t AI playing a bigger role in today’s soft job market?
Sickling said this could be because some AI models still suffer from problems such as hallucinations.
“I am constantly surprised and impressed by the capabilities of AI, but I am also amazed at how wrong these models can sometimes be,” he said. “It is clear that AI still has its limits.”
Of course, there is a risk that as AI tools advance at lightning speed, the risks to human work will also increase. Sickling acknowledged there will be some disruption to employment.
For example, Vanguard expects customer service representatives, data scientists, paralegals, and other professions to suffer from reduced demand for human workers due to technology.
What occupations are most exposed to AI? Economists.
“If the model continues to improve exponentially, it could become a bigger threat to me personally,” Schickling said.
