Technology usually creates jobs for young, skilled workers. Will AI do the same?
At any given time, technology does two things to employment: It replaces traditional jobs, and it creates new lines of work. Machines replace farmers, but enable, say, aeronautical engineers to exist. So, if tech creates new jobs, who gets them? How well do they pay? How long do new jobs remain new, before they become just another common task any worker can do?
A new study of U.S. employment led by MIT labor economist David Autor sheds light on all these matters. In the postwar U.S., as Autor and his colleagues show in granular detail, new forms of work have tended to benefit college graduates under 30 more than anyone else.
“We had never before seen exactly who is doing new work,” Autor says. “It’s done more by young and educated people, in urban settings.”
The study also contains a powerful large-scale insight: A lot of innovation-based new work is...
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