Before the public began to worry in recent weeks that AI would destroy humanity altogether, we mostly worried it would take our jobs. For the past several years, we’ve heard a stream of corporate executives and economists warning about the looming AI employment apocalypse. The media seized on tech layoffs and a spike in the youth unemployment rate in 2025 as the first signs of the great job disappearance.
But in reality, economists are seeing few signs of AI disruption in the labor market. Youth unemployment fell to 7.1% in August 2026, down from an average of 8.3% in 2025. Employment in computer and mathematical occupations such as software developers and information security specialists reached an all-time high in August, according to government surveys. And overall private employment keeps climbing month after month, buoyed in part by data center spending, which is pushing up demand and wages for occupations such as electricians.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently released its assessment of which occupations had “very high,” “high,” “moderate,” and “low” exposure to AI. The BLS warns that “[a]n exposure category is not a forecast of employment growth or decline.”
Indeed, many occupations that have “very high” or “high” exposure to AI grew over the past year, while other occupations with “low” exposure to AI are shrinking. For example, in the first eight months of 2026 compared to the first eight months of 2025, employment is up by 1.3% in computer and mathematical occupations (which include computer programmers, software developers, data scientists, and mathematicians), all of which uniformly have “very high” exposure to AI. Similarly, employment is up by 1.7% in architectural and engineering occupations, all with high or very high exposure to AI. Employment is up by 1.8% in life, physical, and social science occupations (which include biologists, physicists, historians, and economists), almost all of which have high or very high exposure to AI.
