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AI: Jobs, Power & Money
10APR

NBER: nine in ten firms untouched by AI

2 min read
16:54UTC

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.

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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
Office for National Statistics
Office for National Statistics
Deferred its Transformed Labour Force Survey beyond November 2027 and disclosed a May 2026 telephone-collection failure. The ONS carries no AI-attribution layer at all, so Britain sits outside this month's cohort of measuring states by its own admission.
Uber India, Swiggy, Zomato and Urban Company
Uber India, Swiggy, Zomato and Urban Company
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Kenya State Department for ICT and the Digital Economy
Kenya State Department for ICT and the Digital Economy
Its draft AI policy, open for consultation to 4 August, proposes a pay floor for data-annotation work, where Kenyan annotators earn $1.46 to $3.74 an hour against $21 to $27 in the US, on figures relayed by the trade outlet WeeTracker. Kenya is legislating on AI labour even though the World Bank rates it among the least exposed economies.
ARAN and Italian public-sector unions
ARAN and Italian public-sector unions
Signed the CCNL Funzioni Centrali 2025-2027 on 6 August, the first Italian national contract with a dedicated AI Title, barring fully automated employment decisions without meaningful human intervention and requiring advance union notice of AI deployment. The unions secured this through bargaining rather than waiting for legislation.
US employers reporting to Challenger, Gray & Christmas
US employers reporting to Challenger, Gray & Christmas
Named artificial intelligence as the leading stated cause of job cuts for a fifth consecutive month in July, at 33% of that month's total, even as the overall cut count fell 27%. Employers kept citing AI as the reason even as scrutiny of the attribution rose.
Bank for International Settlements
Bank for International Settlements
Bulletin 130 reports a 0.75 percentage point average unemployment rise across high-AIPI countries between 2023 and 2025, while its own footnote 2 states the index is strongly correlated with employment shares in AI-exposed sectors it is used to predict. The bulletin calls the productivity payoff uncertain and uneven.