Employment

If you have one of these jobs, you’re at higher risk of losing it to AI, according to a recent study

Artificial intelligence is already making an impact on hiring practices in the workforce according to a new study. Here’s who is losing out to the computers.

Greg Heilman

Update: Sep 1st, 2025 13:11 EDT

Artificial intelligence has been all the rage in recent years. What was once the realm of science fiction exploded onto the scene in late 2022 with the release of ChatGPT.

Since then, there have been a number of large language model (LLM) AI engines that have stormed into the public sphere that can produce near humanlike results to users’ queries. The ability of these machines to handle tasks carried out by humans has sparked predictions of them annihilating jobs for humans.

A new rigorous study shows that the effect of this revolution is already being felt by some workers.

AI is already taking these jobs from people

Stanford economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen, using data from payroll processing service ADP, found that jobs for people who are just getting started in the workplace were most at risk of being taken over by AI. This group has experienced a 13% reduction in employment since 2022 compared to more experienced workers and measured against those in other fields less threatened at the moment by the emerging technology.

Their working paper titled ‘Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence’, from their findings, states that in the sectors most exposed to AI taking over jobs that employment among workers 22 to 25 fell 6% during the period studied. However, for older workers in the same fields, their employment rose by 6% to 9%, at the same time.

Communication and soft skills are the key

LLMs are trained off of the collective knowledge found across the internet that most young people learn during their education, explained Brynjolfsson.

“These large language models are trained on books, articles and written material found on the internet and elsewhere. That’s the kind of book learning that a lot of people get at universities before they enter the job market, so there is a lot of overlap, with, between these LLMs and the knowledge young people have,” said Brynjolfsson speaking to CBS MoneyWatch.

Meanwhile, older workers, over the course of their working lives, have already navigated many situations which have given them communication and other ‘soft’ skills that are more difficult to teach a computer. So, employers are more hesitant to employ AI in handling these areas of interaction with customers according to the researchers data.

As Brynjolfsson explained to CBS MoneyWatch: “Older workers have a lot of tacit knowledge because they learn tricks of trade from experience that may never be written down anywhere. They have knowledge that’s not in the LLMs, so they’re not being replaced as much by them.”

Which jobs are being affected the most?

The study found that workers trying to get a start in software engineering and customer service jobs are getting hit the hardest. But they are not alone.

A similar pattern was found during their analysis to be occurring in the following fields:

Accounting and auditing
Computer programming
Sales
Secretarial and administrative work

AI is not replacing all jobs

On the bright side, in other fields like nursing, AI is being used to augment the productivity of human workers, and no such declines have been noticed as of yet. The technology is allowing them to dedicate more time to focus on patients in the case of nurses.

“Workers who are using these tools to augment their work are benefiting. There’s a rearrangement of the kind of employment in the economy,” Brynjolfsson explained.

You’d better learn to use AI

Brynjolfsson had some words of advice for young people preparing to enter the workforce. “Young workers who learn how to use AI effectively can be much more productive,” he noted.

“But if you are just doing things that AI can already do for you, you won’t have as much value-add.”