Live data from Hacker News

AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

cnbc.com

201–210 of 662 posts

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#201

I see a worrisome trend. On one hand, many of my proto-boomer friends are suffering from age-ism , and memes claim that over-50-year-olds are unemployable. Not 100% fidelity, but there's some truth. Then I hear about a lot of youngsters struggling to find work, and see articles like this. Well, who's left? Is there a sweet spot at like 31 that are just cleaning up?

beside the point, but over 50 = proto-boomer? You mean para-boomer, maybe? Gen X is <=60, I believe, so you referring to the cusp boomer/genx I think..

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#202
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's that our job is the most automatable, but that the interface is the easiest to adapt to our workflow. I have a feeling language models will be good at virtually every "sit at a desk" job in a virtually identical capacity, it's just the act of plugging an AI into these roles is non-obvious. Like every business was impacted by the Internet equally, the early applications were just an artifact of what…

> I'm not sure it's that our job is the most automatable I don't know. It seems pretty friendly to automation to me. When was the last time you wrote assembly? When was the last time you had map memory? Think about blitting memory to a screen buffer to draw a square on a screen? Schedule processes and threads? These are things that I routinely did as a junior engineer writing software a long time ago. Most people at…

RAD programming held the same promise, as did UML, flow/low/no code platforms.

Inevitably, people remember that the hard part of programming isn't so much the code as it is putting requirements into maintainable code that can respond to future requirements.

LLMs basically only automate the easiest part of the job today. Time will tell if they get better, but my money is on me fixing people's broken LLM generated businesses rather than being replaced by one.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#203

High interest rates + tariff terror -> less investment -> less jobs But let's blame AI

> But let's blame AI

The thing whose exact purpose is to replace labor? Must be a conspiracy going on to suggest its linked to reducing labor. Bias! Agenda!

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#205
post #119
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found this article from last year saying IIT grads are facing the same grim outlook as technology hiring in India for new grads has also dried up https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-05-30/tough-... So, that doesn't seem like a likely culprit unless you have some convincing evidence.

I think you are conflating 2 things. AI could be going after new entry level jobs in software engineering. I am not a professional engineer but an accountant by trade (I like writing software as a hobby lol) but this article looks like evidence that IIT grads will have a harder time getting these jobs that AI is attacking. My comment rests on the fact that the report doesn't really reconcile with AI destroying entry…

I think the article doesn't really prove AI is the culprit but I think this other article disproves that offshoring is. If offshoring was the culprit why is it only affecting the most junior employees? I think the case is still open but AI is the leading candidate.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#206

High interest rates + tariff terror -> less investment -> less jobs But let's blame AI

How does that make sense? Wouldn’t high interest rates and tariffs cause more expensive engineers to have disproportionate opportunity? I remember during 2008 it was much easier for my employer to justify junior engineers than senior ones.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#207

High interest rates + tariff terror -> less investment -> less jobs But let's blame AI

Since this article is about AI, and since this comment seems rather low effort compared to the Stanford study, I went ahead and used low effort to analyze the report compare it to this comment. Here's my low effort AI response:

> Prompt: Attached is a paper. Below is an argument made against it. Is there anything in the paper that addresses the argument?: High interest rates + tariff terror -> less investment -> less jobs

> High rates/firm shocks: They add firm–time fixed effects that absorb broad firm shocks (like interest-rate changes), and the within-firm drop for 22–25-year-olds in AI-exposed roles remains.

> “Less investment” story: They note the 2022 §174 R&D amortization change and show the pattern persists even after excluding computer occupations and information-sector firms.

> Other non-AI explanations: The decline shows up in both teleworkable and non-teleworkable jobs and isn’t explained by pandemic-era education issues.

> Tariffs: Tariffs aren’t analyzed directly; broad tariff impacts would be soaked up by the firm–time controls, but a tariff-specific, task-level channel isn’t separately tested.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#208

High interest rates + tariff terror -> less investment -> less jobs But let's blame AI

You really do have to account for why this is mainly happening in industries that are adopting AI, why it's almost exclusively impacting entry-level positions (with senior positions steady or growing), and why controlling for broad economic conditions failed to correct this. I doubt very much that these three Stanford professors would be blindsided by the concept of rates and tarriffs.

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it gets to the point where I can no longer find a tech job I am just going to buy a trailer, live somewhere cheap, and just make money doing odd jobs while spending most of my time programming what I want. I don't want to participate in a society where all I have for job options is a McJob or some Amazon warehouse.

Is it hard to date with a trailer?

[deleted]

Re: AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study

#210
post #201

I see a worrisome trend. On one hand, many of my proto-boomer friends are suffering from age-ism , and memes claim that over-50-year-olds are unemployable. Not 100% fidelity, but there's some truth. Then I hear about a lot of youngsters struggling to find work, and see articles like this. Well, who's left? Is there a sweet spot at like 31 that are just cleaning up?

beside the point, but over 50 = proto-boomer? You mean para-boomer, maybe? Gen X is <=60, I believe, so you referring to the cusp boomer/genx I think..

genx is now proto-boomer
Post reply on HN