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AI: Jobs, Power & Money
27JUL

NBER: nine in ten firms untouched by AI

2 min read
10:02UTC

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 SAP freezes R&D headcount as others deny AIJump 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
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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 Commission
European Commission
The European Commission's draft Annex III guidelines, closed for comment on 23 July, treat algorithmic scoring in recruitment, pay and termination as high-risk regardless of whether a human signs off, echoing Spain's Audiencia Nacional ruling 101/2026 on concealed scheduling algorithms. Brussels is shifting the fight from counting AI job losses to assigning legal liability for the tools themselves.
Office for National Statistics
Office for National Statistics
The Office for National Statistics recorded UK vacancies rising to 712,000 on 21 July, the first quarterly increase this beat has tracked, with payrolled employment down 85,000 on the year against May's 210,000 fall. The bulletin names no AI cause anywhere, and that is the point: nothing in the release confirms the displacement story it gets cited to support.
Christian Klein, SAP
Christian Klein, SAP
Christian Klein told investors on 23 July that SAP's research headcount will not grow for twelve months because AI agents and their token costs are absorbing the work, not because SAP is cutting jobs. He frames it as commercial arithmetic: the cost of AI-assisted coding tokens plus the salaries specialist AI hires command, not people being replaced by machines.
Betsey Stevenson, University of Michigan
Betsey Stevenson, University of Michigan
Betsey Stevenson argued that the 187,000 jobless-claims reading describes a market that hires little and fires little, not one AI is emptying. She said the real damage hides in eligibility rules and suppressed job postings, not in the headline layoff counts employers keep denying.
Comisiones Obreras, UGT and Concentrix's A Coruña works committee
Comisiones Obreras, UGT and Concentrix's A Coruña works committee
Comisiones Obreras, UGT and Concentrix's A Coruña works committee blamed Microsoft's push toward AI self-service for the 80 redundancies unions signed off on 22 July, not unavoidable business cause. A second Coruña procedure covering 80 more jobs runs to a 31 August deadline, and the unions want the state, not the employer, setting the pace of AI-driven cuts.
Stanford's 'We Must Act Now' signatories
Stanford's 'We Must Act Now' signatories
More than 200 academics, including 16 Nobel laureates, published a 13 July letter warning of AI-driven labour disruption, citing Daron Acemoglu's NBER estimate that AI's total factor productivity gain stays under 0.66% over ten years. The letter's own cited economics sit well below Goldman Sachs Research's 1.5-percentage-point estimate published the same week.