Depending on the headline you read this morning, AI has either eliminated the first job you were planning to get, or it has eliminated nothing at all, and the whole panic is a stock-price magic trick performed by executives in Patagonia vests.
Both stories can't be entirely true, but everyone seems to be quoting real data. They toss statistics back and forth online like a cafeteria food fight.
So, before you spiral into your next doom-scroll, change your major, or drop out of college, let's separate what we actually know to be true from what people are predicting. Those are two very different piles of numbers, and most headlines shovel them together.
Pile One: The Live Data
The most serious evidence so far comes from Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson and his colleagues, who got access to payroll records covering millions of American workers. Their "Canaries in the Coal Mine" research found that workers aged 22 to 25 in the jobs most exposed to AI have seen employment drop roughly 13 to 16 percent since late 2022, while their older coworkers in the same jobs held steady.
This is data worth paying attention to because it compares the same occupations in the same companies. The decline in employment shows up almost entirely among the youngest workers, and it concentrates in roles where AI automates the work rather than assists with it. For example, junior software developers got hit, but senior ones didn't.
When critics called his findings a blip, Brynjolfsson built a live dashboard tracking 4.6 million workers so anyone can watch the numbers move in near real time. His summary of the trend: "It's not going away."
Aneesh Raman, LinkedIn's Chief Economic Opportunity Officer, has been sounding this alarm since 2025, when he wrote in the New York Times that "Breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder." The tasks that used to train rookies — debugging code, reviewing documents, drafting the first version of anything — are exactly what AI does fastest.
That's the catastrophe case, and it deserves your attention.
Related: The "Safe" Major Is a Crowded Trade
Pile Two: The Skeptics
Now, let's turn to the other side of the cafeteria.
Every time a company announces layoffs and points to AI, the stock market applauds. Announcing "we're restructuring for AI" sounds visionary. Announcing "we hired way too many people in 2021, and our CFO is sweating" does not. Skeptics call this AI-washing, and the evidence for it keeps piling up too.
Research firm Forrester found that many companies announcing AI-related layoffs don't actually have working AI systems ready to replace the people they are cutting. MIT professor Paul Osterman and author of Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment points out that executives have promised "smaller, flatter teams" forever. "They've been saying that for 20 years," he notes. Even Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy, after months of AI-forward messaging, clarified that his company's cuts were "not really AI-driven, not right now at least."
And here's a twist worthy of a sitcom: even Sam Altman — who runs OpenAI and benefits more than anyone alive from the story that AI changes everything — has warned that many of these mass layoffs have more to do with ordinary business problems than with AI.
So Who's Right?
Annoyingly, parts of both are true. The Stanford data is real, and it's specific — young workers, AI-exposed jobs, automation-heavy tasks. The AI-washing is also real, and it's specific — companies that overhired, underbuilt, and found a flattering story.
The mistake is treating either one as the whole picture. "AI is eliminating entire job categories" is a prediction. Employment for 22-to-25-year-olds in AI-exposed jobs fell 13 percent" is a measurement. Predictions are someone's guess about the future, usually made by a person with something to sell — a book, a keynote, consulting services, or (looking in the mirror) fair enough, sometimes all three.
Even the measurements can still be argued about. Brynjolfsson's team kept refining when the decline became statistically meaningful. And most of the statistics form observed correlations, not definitive connections. Still, better to predict with data than without it.
What You Actually Do With This
You don't need to resolve a debate that professional economists haven't resolved. You just need to act sensibly under uncertainty, which happens to be a skill that will serve you for the next sixty years. As the 1939 poster from the British Ministry of Information states, “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
So, how do you do that? Three moves:
Watch data, discount vibes. When you see a scary headline, ask one question: is this a measurement or a forecast? The Canaries dashboard is public. So are the job reports. You can check primary sources in less time than it takes to read the article with the clickbait title.
Notice where the pain is. The declines cluster in tasks AI automates. Work where AI assists a human who still owns the judgment is holding up far better. That distinction should shape what you learn far more than any headline.
Assume the ladder is wobbly and build accordingly. If the bottom rung really is cracking, the students who win are the ones who show up already able to do second-rung work. That's a preparation problem. Preparation problems have solutions.
My prediction: the messy debate will rage on. Executives will keep spinning, economists will keep measuring, and the headlines will keep swinging between apocalypse and hoax.
You? Keep your eye on the data, keep calm, and keep climbing.
A Conversation for the Parents
I recently joined Lianne Castelino on the Where Parents Talk podcast to discuss a question I hear from parents all the time: How do we prepare our kids for careers that are changing faster than the advice we can give them?
Even the executives I work with who are leading AI transformation are asking that question.
During our discussion, Lianne and I talked about AI, college choices, the risks of letting technology do the learning for you, and why students need to take ownership of their futures.
Listen to the full episode here or find it on your favorite podcast app.
Learn How To Become Indispensable in the Age of AI
Discover more insights in my book, Indispensable: A Student’s Guide for Thriving in the Age of AI.
Published by Damn Gravity, Indispensable takes a practical look at how students can develop the habits, skills, and mindset they'll need to thrive as technology advances.
