Goldman: AI-displaced workers jobless a month longer

The Goldman analysis arrives as employers are naming AI directly in layoff announcements. Through September, companies blamed AI for 120,136 announced job cuts, about 21% of all cuts and the top reason given, according to the report. That backdrop helps explain why the study focuses on workers whose positions were eliminated, not just those in AI-exposed occupations.

The Labor Department survey behind the analysis counted 7.4 million workers displaced from 2023 through 2025, up from 6.3 million in the prior period. Within that larger pool, Mei's AI-exposure score isolates the top 30% of displaced workers, and the reemployment gap he finds is measured against other displaced workers rather than against all workers.

Mei also looked at earlier technology-driven disruptions and found that in the years after losing a job to technology, workers' real earnings grew more slowly than those of other displaced workers. The paper does not break the one-month delay down by occupation or publish a list of which jobs sit inside the top-30% exposure bucket, so the specific roles most affected remain unspecified. The same day, a separate Careerminds reading found that a third of AI layoffs have since been reversed, suggesting some displacement may prove temporary even as the Goldman data points to longer jobless spells for those affected.