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Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

economist.com

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Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#21

Post by alephnerd »

jerojero wrote: post #6

If most of the jobs its creating are related to construction of infrastructure then that's not really positive news as these jobs are temporary, once demand settles then why kind of jobs are going to be created? It might be benefiting other areas, but I think as the technology improves a lot of those are going to start looking like what's happening in software development (which is arguably what the technology is bes…

Most of these jobs are the same jobs that arose thanks to the CHIPS and IRA. Much of the AI boom and trade is building on top of the capex that arose from the semiconductor/hardware portfolio during that era.

Many of the current DCs being built out are also being powered or tied with renewable energy projects that were funded by the IRA, as many DC builders with deep pockets do know the political dimension. If this is what keeps the CHIPS, IRA, and the IIJA alive I'm happy.

Every industry and career type goes through ebbs and flows. The 2010s was a white collar boom, and the 2020s is now a white collar bust. Meanwhile the 2010s was a skilled trades bust and the 2020s is now a skilled trades boom.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#22

Post by mrob »

delichon wrote: post #15
jerojero wrote: post #6

If most of the jobs its creating are related to construction of infrastructure then that's not really positive news as these jobs are temporary, once demand settles then why kind of jobs are going to be created? It might be benefiting other areas, but I think as the technology improves a lot of those are going to start looking like what's happening in software development (which is arguably what the technology is bes…

AI construction jobs are temporary up to Kardashev 3 or so.

Humans become irrelevant well before then.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#23

Post by AnimalMuppet »

gruez wrote: post #4
2381275 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

>The Economist, Silicon Valley's primary submarine, dispels the notion that AI causes unemployment because SV has realized that the peasants get unruly. ??? From a few months ago: https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260516_DE_...

I suspect "submarine" was meant in this sense: https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Note well: This does not mean that I agree with any part of what he said. Just explaining the term.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#24

Post by wolttam »

delichon wrote: post #15
jerojero wrote: post #6

If most of the jobs its creating are related to construction of infrastructure then that's not really positive news as these jobs are temporary, once demand settles then why kind of jobs are going to be created? It might be benefiting other areas, but I think as the technology improves a lot of those are going to start looking like what's happening in software development (which is arguably what the technology is bes…

AI construction jobs are temporary up to Kardashev 3 or so.

But it will be automated long before then

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#25

Post by DubiousPusher »

I've spent 10 years implementing new technology into businesses from all over the world and the thing that has killed the most projects at the proof of concept phase has not been whether it works. It's whether the cost of going to production from PoC produces a significant ROI. AI is absolutely changing the economics there.

Humans were simply nowhere near answering all the useful questions they had which software could answer. The problem was that software was expensive.

Now, software is cheaper and so people who couldn't afford to answer questions they've long wondered about can afford to answer them.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#26

Post by ericmay »

konaraddi wrote: post #7

Paywalled > On September 4th the Bureau of Labour Statistics reported that the American economy added 162,000 jobs in August, far above expectations. Good news that ought to be taken with a pinch of salt given how the current administration responds to unfavorable BLS data - > On Friday, August 1, [2025] President Trump fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer from her role as the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BL…

Wasn’t she only in that job for a year? Maybe she was doing a bad job.

The current head of the BLS seems well qualified. Here are some select quotes from a NYT article [1]:

  “Erica Groshen, who was commissioner during the Obama administration, also praised the selection. “He’s a B.L.S.-er, he’s a data nerd,” she said.”

  “The firing, and Mr. Antoni’s subsequent nomination, raised concerns that Mr. Trump would seek to interfere in the agency’s operations and perhaps try to skew its estimates to his political advantage. “
  
  “There is no evidence that has happened so far. The agency has been run since August by William Wiatrowski, its longtime deputy commissioner, who also led the bureau on an interim basis under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Economists continue to view the numbers the agency produces as reliable.”
Now these comments were written back in January of this year.

Can you cite any specific examples of wrongdoing? Or inaccurate numbers or figures outside of normal revisions?

When I see bad numbers from the BLS I say yes that’s probably true. When I see good numbers from the BLS I say yes that’s probably true.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/business/trump-bureau-of-...

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#27

Post by pram »

windward wrote: post #17

While I'm still catastrophically worried about what AI means for my career, I've noticed that my current employer - very AI forward, and growing the team - is still facing an ever expanding backlog. High productivity is generally good for the employee, unless you're productive enough you run out of work to do. So how much code is needed?

Yes I’ve seen very little change over the past 3 years in my role (platform engineering) except mostly JIRA tickets are more unreadable because people just have Claude vomit a novel into it.

I mean I use it every day of course, but the velocity of work doesn’t really seem to be budging lol. And frankly a lot of time wasted on AI made gadgets, and meetings about those gadgets (look at this dashboard Claude made! etc)

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#28

Post by alanmoraes »

> The Economist estimates that AI has so far created around 1m new jobs in America. That easily exceeds the roughly 200,000 lay-offs attributed to AI since mid-2023, and appears more than enough to offset weaker hiring in many back-office roles. America’s AI infrastructure splurge has created many of them. (...) That building spree requires armies of workers: electricians to wire them, HVAC specialists to stop racks from overheating, grid engineers to hook them up to the power supply and technicians to install and maintain the machines.

I'm not sure whether the salaries of the new jobs are on par with those of the lost jobs.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#29

Post by jephs »

jerojero wrote: post #6

If most of the jobs its creating are related to construction of infrastructure then that's not really positive news as these jobs are temporary, once demand settles then why kind of jobs are going to be created? It might be benefiting other areas, but I think as the technology improves a lot of those are going to start looking like what's happening in software development (which is arguably what the technology is bes…

The construction jobs are only temporary if the compute infrastructure build-out decelerates. That seems pretty unlikely in the mid-term! It would mean that, like, there's a fixed appetite for data centers, and once we satisfy that appetite, we stop building them.

For better or worse, it looks more like that we're gonna tile the whole damn planet in data centers, at a faster and faster clip.

Re: Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive

#30

Post by charlieyu1 »

jerojero wrote: post #6

If most of the jobs its creating are related to construction of infrastructure then that's not really positive news as these jobs are temporary, once demand settles then why kind of jobs are going to be created? It might be benefiting other areas, but I think as the technology improves a lot of those are going to start looking like what's happening in software development (which is arguably what the technology is bes…

Everything is temporary, especially jobs.
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