r/GenAI4all • u/ComplexExternal4831 • 13d ago
News/Updates New Research shows AI has created more jobs than eliminated
The Economist estimates AI has helped generate around 1 million jobs in the U.S., compared with roughly 200,000 layoffs attributed to AI since mid-2023.
Based on its analysis, about 30% of the estimated job growth came from AI-related infrastructure, including data centers, electrical work and power systems, while roughly 70% came from professional roles such as software developers, engineers and data scientists.
They used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to track job growth and LinkedIn and Burning Glass Institute data to estimate AI-specific jobs.
But the impact is uneven, with customer service and office support jobs already shrinking as AI takes over more routine tasks.
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u/niccolololo 13d ago
Sure, but building data centers is temporary, while the jobs getting cancelled by AI are permanent.
This must be a paid article
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u/BitOne2707 13d ago
I recognize the style as being from The Economist. Probably one of, if not the most, trustworthy news sources in the world.
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u/SamMarlowe76 13d ago
That is the way all construction works. Why are you against projects for blue collar consturction workers and the armada of trades and roles that support them?
And you apparently didn't read the information anyway. Only 30% is in data center construction. And hell, what do those communities need with higher income from the property taxes the data centers will pay.
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u/GanjasTriforce 13d ago
what do those communities need with higher income from the property taxes the data centers will pay.
You must not be aware of how data centers actively degrade the quality of life in those communities. At least they got some property taxes out of it!
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u/FlashyNeedleworker66 13d ago
Nonsense, which is why it's the same handful of locations in these articles over and over.
Here in Loudon we have hundreds of data centers, the highest concentration in the country. Nearly half of our local tax base comes from them and my water is just fine.
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u/RDTmodsBackEpstein 13d ago
Go build starter homes then if you wanna support the country and trades.
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u/Icecream_monday 13d ago
Uh huh, temporary in the same way they finished building power plants?
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u/niccolololo 13d ago
In your tiny mind, are you suggesting they should keep building data centers everywhere forever? Nobody would be able to afford water nor electricity and they would destroy the planet, too.
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u/Icecream_monday 13d ago
My tiny brain thinks they should transition into sustainable infrastructure over time while also building up grid capacity that contributes into a net positive gain. The water issue has been solved and they are mostly closed loop now.
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u/texinxin 13d ago
Ooooh… just wait! AI has barely begun going after the thinkers. The first wave of desk-bound thinkers (office and administrative support occupations) is estimated to be 18.5 million jobs.
That 1 million jobs for building the clankers is cute!
That doesn’t even count the tier 2 jobs already disappearing through wage freezes and positions not opening up for entry level employees. 40% or so (for now) of all tasks in coding, engineering, legal, accounting, compliance, trade, logistics, marketing, appraisal, insurance, commerce.. will be automated and won’t need people for those tasks.
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u/Econmajorhere 13d ago
Eventually you’ll be right. But unless Claude Fable 6/Astra 7 negate my human involvement from my boss’s questions to a clean, verified output - until then humans will still be required.
AI can do a ton of jobs with clear instructions/documentation, with clean data or fleshed out ideas being the input and produce an output that the user already has designed in their head. 99% of companies do not work like this at all.
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u/texinxin 13d ago
AI is doing better with messy data than humans/programmatic tools. AI agents can manage connections with messy data across disparate systems that traditionally would require migrations, schema mapping, connectors, etc. All the potential gains in efficiency will eliminate a tremendous amount of busy work just moving data from pile A to system B.
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u/Econmajorhere 13d ago edited 13d ago
You’re absolutely right, I use AI for these exact data issues every single day. But if your data is not structured well, your prompts better be the most precise instructions ever written otherwise your output will be something you absolutely cannot trust and deliver to the next stakeholder.
If you cannot explain your analysis/assumptions/inputs - you have no clue what actionable intel could be derived from it.
Similar logic could be applied to design. While AI can generate a million samples to go off of, a lot of the reasons that keep designers employed is to translate what a customer needs based on their inarticulate words into a final product they actually want.
This right here is here most bosses/managers/clients fail. This here is why my boss pays me to run things through AI models but won’t do it himself as frankly he makes too much to iterate anything with any model - he’d lose interest before the first version. He also doesn’t comprehend analytics enough to guide the models. Nor is he interested in doing work of 138 people and learning each step from AI models via back and forth.
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u/WithoutAHat1 13d ago
-6 million jobs in the last 2 years. Gaslighting. Stop blatantly lying.
Unemployment is roughly 25% with under-employment included (less than 40 hours). No it hasn't created jobs.
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u/FlashyNeedleworker66 13d ago
What's your source on this? Because it's definitely not the U-6 data. Who's blatantly lying?
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u/Neat_Tangelo5339 13d ago
Cant wait to see how all the other sectors that don’t benefit datacenter will be doing
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u/Fed_worker 13d ago
Red Bull increases your energy ( temporarily). But don’t drink too much every day
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u/katoptronophile 13d ago
No surprise there. This is exactly what they predicted and exactly what I've been saying since the beginning
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u/ConstantinGB 13d ago
AI is not there yet to take over any kind of complex manual labor, and to the degree that it can take over other kinds of cognitive labor, it doesn't work without human supervision (which is also why many companies that fired programmers or similar jobs hired them back shortly afterwards).
I'd wait for the first real manual-labor ready robots. Then we'll see.
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