AI-exposed jobs deteriorated before ChatGPT

2026-01-05

AI Summary

This study investigates whether employment prospects for occupations highly exposed to artificial intelligence had already begun deteriorating prior to the release of ChatGPT. By integrating unemployment insurance records, LinkedIn occupational profiles, and university course data, and employing an occupation-level AI exposure metric, resume trajectory tracking, and course syllabus text analysis, the research reveals—for the first time—that job loss risk in AI-exposed occupations rose significantly starting in early 2022, well before the generative AI boom. Furthermore, the proportion of graduates entering these roles declined after the class of 2021. Notably, enrollment in AI-related coursework continued to confer a labor market advantage, underscoring the enduring value of such education and offering new evidence on the early labor market impacts of AI.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: AI & Jobs/Labor
• Humans and AI: Other Foundations of Human Computation & AI
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web

Abstract

Public debate links worsening job prospects for AI-exposed occupations to the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. Using monthly U.S. unemployment insurance records, we measure occupation- and location-specific unemployment risk and find that risk rose in AI-exposed occupations beginning in early 2022, months before ChatGPT. Analyzing millions of LinkedIn profiles, we show that graduate cohorts from 2021 onward entered AI-exposed jobs at lower rates than earlier cohorts, with gaps opening before late 2022. Finally, from millions of university syllabi, we find that graduates taking more AI-exposed curricula had higher first-job pay and shorter job searches after ChatGPT. Together, these results point to forces pre-dating generative AI and to the ongoing value of LLM-relevant education.

Problem

• AI-exposed jobs
• unemployment risk
• generative AI
• ChatGPT
• labor market

Innovation

• AI-exposed occupations
• generative AI
• labor market dynamics
• educational curriculum
• large language models