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AI displacing young professionals in tech fastest, warns Goldman Sachs
The economist highlighted a sharp increase in unemployment among individuals aged 20 to 30 who are attempting to establish careers in the technology industry.
The economist highlighted a sharp increase in unemployment among individuals aged 20 to 30 who are attempting to establish careers in the technology industry.
Joblessness among young professionals in the technology sector is rising rapidly, according to Joseph Briggs, Senior Global Economist at Goldman Sachs Research. Speaking on a recent episode of the bank’s podcast, Goldman Sachs Exchanges, Briggs warned that younger tech employees are at the greatest risk of being displaced by advances in artificial intelligence.
The economist highlighted a sharp increase in unemployment among individuals aged 20 to 30 who are attempting to establish careers in the technology industry. Since the beginning of 2024, joblessness within this age group has surged by nearly three percentage points — a rise more than four times the national average. According to Goldman Sachs, this trend marks the early phase of AI-driven job displacement in white-collar sectors, with entry-level roles bearing the initial impact.
“If you look at the tech sector’s employment trends, they’ve been growing as a share of overall employment in a remarkably linear manner for the last 20 years,” Briggs noted on the podcast episode, scheduled for release on Tuesday. “Over the last three years, we’ve actually seen a pullback in tech hiring that has led it to undershoot its trend,” he added.
A new report from Goldman Sachs, entitled Quantifying the Risks of AI-Related Job Displacement and co-authored by Briggs, reveals that only around 9% of companies have actively implemented AI in their standard production operations within the past fortnight — indicating that adoption remains limited for now.
Nonetheless, the technology sector has witnessed a notable drop in employment over recent years. This shift coincides with the rollout of AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and represents a clear departure from more than two decades of consistent employment growth within the industry.
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