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AI: Jobs, Power & Money
8JUN

NBER: nine in ten firms untouched by AI

2 min read
11:04UTC

A multinational survey of 6,000 executives found most companies see no employment effect from AI. Inside those same firms, bosses and workers hold opposite forecasts.

← Back to Jobs report says fine, layoff report says noJump to analysis ↓
EconomicDeveloping
Key takeaway

Bosses expect AI to cut jobs while their own employees expect it to create them.

A survey of nearly 6,000 senior executives across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that 90% of firms report no impact on employment or productivity from AI so far. 1 Sixty-nine per cent of the surveyed firms actively use the technology. Nine in ten see nothing happening.

The contradiction sits inside the forecasts. Executives at these firms predict a 0.7% employment decline over the next three years. Employees at the same companies predict a 0.5% increase. 2 One group expects cuts. The other expects growth. They work in the same buildings, use the same tools, and hold irreconcilable views of what comes next.

During the 1990s offshoring wave, management planned relocations years before workers learned their roles would move overseas. Approximately 3.4 million US manufacturing jobs were lost between 1995 and 2005. Workers could not prepare because they did not know. The NBER data, spanning four countries with different labour market systems, suggests this gap is structural, not cultural . If executives act on private bearish forecasts without informing staff, displacement will arrive as a shock rather than a managed transition.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

A research body surveyed nearly 6,000 bosses across the US, UK, Germany, and Australia and asked whether AI has yet affected hiring or productivity at their companies. Nine in ten said no. But the same bosses predict employment at their firms will fall slightly over the next three years. Workers at those same companies predict it will rise slightly. Someone is wrong. Given that bosses set hiring plans, their forecast is more likely to be self-fulfilling.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Information asymmetry within firms is the structural cause. Executives have access to strategic planning documents, vendor capability assessments, and board-level restructuring discussions that do not reach workers. The 1.2-percentage-point forecast gap (0.7% decline vs 0.5% increase) is more consistent with deliberate non-disclosure than with genuine disagreement.

The 69% active AI adoption rate combined with the 90% null employment impact suggests a deployment phase that is currently affecting task structure without reducing headcount. The NBER finding by Humlum and Vestergaard that LLM adoption produces occupational switching without net changes in hours or earnings supports this reading: impact is happening below the level of employment statistics.

Measurement lag is also structural. Employment surveys capture headcount but not task composition or hiring freeze effects. The Dallas Fed found displacement operating primarily through collapsed job-finding rates among workers under 25, a mechanism invisible to standard employment impact questions.

What could happen next?
  • Risk

    The executive-employee forecast gap may widen as deployment accelerates, producing a shock dynamic similar to 1990s offshoring where workers had no preparation time.

    Medium term · Medium
  • Consequence

    Policymakers relying on current employment statistics will underestimate displacement risk because the primary mechanism is hiring suppression, not firing, which appears later in official data.

    Short term · High
  • Meaning

    The 90% null result at 69% adoption rates confirms the technology is in a pre-deployment productivity phase; the employment shock, if it arrives, will be sudden rather than gradual.

    Long term · Medium
Sources:NBER (Yotzov, Barrero, Bloom, Bunn, Davis et al)
Mentions:United Kingdom →Prima →United States →Anthropic →Dario Amodei →National Bureau of Economic Research →
First Reported In

Update #3 · The AI jobs data contradicts itself

NBER (Yotzov, Barrero, Bloom, Bunn, Davis et al)· 28 Mar 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
This Event
NBER: nine in ten firms untouched by AI
The largest cross-country executive survey reveals a dangerous information gap: employers expect job losses while their own workers expect gains.
Led to
Three in four never file claims
NBER finding that 90% of firms report zero AI impact persists because measurement systems cannot see the displaced workers.
Occurred 28 Mar 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
European workers and regulators
European workers and regulators
NBER working paper w34995 found European workers use generative AI at 32% versus 43% of US workers, a gap driven by management practice rather than regulation. The EU AI Act's high-risk employment deadline stays at December 2027, leaving European workers facing the same displacement curve two to four years behind the US.
AI industry (Leading the Future PAC, OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz)
AI industry (Leading the Future PAC, OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz)
Leading the Future committed over $100 million to the 2026 midterms and targeted regulation-minded candidates in the 2 June primaries; its counter-fund Public First formed at $50 million. The PAC runs advertising on healthcare and jobs without naming AI, mirroring the 1994 insurance industry campaign that defeated the Clinton health plan.
UK youth entering the labour market
UK youth entering the labour market
UK youth unemployment reached 14.7% in January-March 2026, the highest since 2014, with 22.7% of young jobseekers out of work more than a year. The ONS publishes no AI-exposure breakdown, so policy is being set blind to the channel doing the damage.
US displaced workers (tech and finance)
US displaced workers (tech and finance)
Tech workers face median reemployment times of 4.7 months, up 47% from 2024, with a hiring pool contracting faster than AI-specialist openings can absorb them. Finance operations workers are the next cohort: 52% of their employers now run agentic AI in the exact functions where most of them work.
TSMC and Taiwan chip supply chain
TSMC and Taiwan chip supply chain
Nvidia's 17% headcount growth to 42,000 on $81.6 billion in quarterly revenue depends on TSMC's CoWoS advanced packaging capacity constraining H100 and B200 supply, sustaining margins above 70%. The AI build-out's sole headcount-growth story runs through a Taiwan supply chain that has no parallel in downstream software.
Displaced tech workers globally
Displaced tech workers globally
CrowdStrike's SEC disclosure puts AI attribution on a material regulatory record for the first time, but Oracle's Massachusetts WARN clock expired unfiled after up to 14 workers were logged as remote despite office proximity. The legal apparatus cannot enforce what it cannot see: hybrid reclassification, GCC transfers, and hires never made.