Here’s a weird contradiction. Anthropic published a major labor market study showing AI could theoretically handle 94% of computer science tasks… but is only being used for 33%.
There’s been no spike in unemployment among highly exposed workers since late 2022. Meanwhile, Citadel Securities released a chart showing software engineering job postings are up 11% year-over-year.
Wait, so AI ISN’T taking jobs? Not so fast.
Buried in Anthropic’s own data: hiring of young workers (ages 22-25) into AI-exposed occupations has dropped ~14%. A separate study found firms adopting GenAI reduce junior headcount entirely through slower hiring, not layoffs. And Block just cut nearly half its workforce, with Jack Dorsey explicitly saying AI lets smaller teams do the same work.
Here’s what’s actually happening
- Alex Imas’ research documents clear micro-productivity gains (14-55%+ in coding, support, and writing) that haven’t yet shown up in macro statistics, mirroring past IT revolutions.
- AI makes software dramatically cheaper to build, so demand for software explodes (hence Citadel’s rising job postings)
- But each software unit needs fewer people to build it.
- Imas and Shukla’s adoption data shows AI usage is concentrated among higher-skilled, higher-income workers, and the gap isn’t closing. Even 18 months after firms bought AI coding licenses, only half of the engineers actually used them. The people who invest in learning gain leverage; the ones who don’t fall behind.
- Put all that together, and the labor pool you’re competing with grows, because remote work has already globalized the talent market, and AI amplifies that effect further.
We posit the real issue isn’t losing jobs. It’s losing wages.
More software jobs exist, but the price per unit of work is falling. Companies hire more people to build more things, but they don’t need to pay each person as much when the tools do more of the heavy lifting. This is the pattern that played out with remote work (contractors competing with a global workforce on price); now add AI on top.
Why this matters
This is why we keep pushing you to learn to code, to build with AI, to ship your own projects, and to run your own models.
Learning these skills is insurance. The ability to create your own value, independently, without relying on a single employer to pay you for tasks that get cheaper every quarter… that’s the most durable career move you can make right now.
Editor’s note: This content originally ran in the newsletter of our sister publication, The Neuron. To read more from The Neuron, sign up for its newsletter here.