Median Wage Impact from AI by 2030

Goldman Sachs: tech-displaced workers take >3% short-run real earnings hit

Long-lasting impacts: 10 years after a job loss, technology-displaced workers' real earnings were 10 percentage points below that of non-displaced workers. Short-run impacts: It can take one month longer for technology-displaced workers to find a new job; and their inflation-adjusted earnings take bigger hits (more than 3%) versus other workers (negligible effect).

GS: displaced workers downgrade to more routine, lower-skill jobs

Workers displaced from technology-disrupted occupations face more difficult short-run transitions back into employment. They take approximately one month longer to find a new job and suffer real earnings losses of more than 3% upon reemployment, compared with negligible losses for workers displaced from more stable occupations.

Hosseini/Lichtinger: Avg 17% productivity gain partially offset by entry-barrier erosion

The mean is 0.17 (SD 0.11), implying that for the average occupation, GenAI could reduce total work time by roughly 17 percent under this conservative calibration.

OpenAI: proposes 32-hour workweek pilots, public wealth fund

Workers using AI might well agree that it's increasing their productivity without believing they're seeing the benefits.

FRI: Rapid scenario → labor income share drops from ~58% to 45% by 2050

In a rapid AI scenario, economists forecast labor income share dropping from ~58% to 45% by 2050, implying significant downward pressure on median wages even if aggregate GDP grows.

Lichtinger & Hosseini: Net AI inequality effect genuinely open question

whether it is, on net, an equalizing force remains a genuinely open question—one that the current evidence, important as it is, does not yet answer.

total income loss of between $200 billion to $1.5 trillion, representing 2% to 15% of overall income from wages and salaries across the U.S.

Anthropic: Claude tasks avg $47.9/hr vs $37.3 US avg wage

This estimate of the value of tasks in Claude.ai has dropped slightly from $49.3 to $47.9. US avg. hourly wage: $37.3.

Freund & Mann: Wage effects non-monotonic; +4% moderate, -35% high exposure

average individual wages are roughly unchanged for incumbents of occupations with no AI exposure, rise by around 4% at moderate exposure, and drop by as much as 35% for workers in the most exposed occupations

Yale (Restrepo): Automation targets above-median wage tasks, amplifying losses

In research forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, they examine how automation often targets tasks that pay workers wages above their outside options. When those tasks are automated, those wage 'rents' disappear, amplifying wage losses and contributing to rising inequality.

Furman (BLS): productivity 2.2% above CBO forecast; 2.8% annual growth

Are we finally seeing AI in the productivity data? A big upward revision to earlier data and strong Q4 bring us 2.2% above CBO's pre-pandemic forecast. Annual rates: 1 year: 2.8%, 2 years: 2.5%, 6 years: 2.2%

Korinek & Stiglitz: Welfare gains from steering tech depend on labor's factor share

Benefits of steering technology depend on complementarity to labor, relative income, and labor factor share.

Dallas Fed: AI exposure has ~zero effect on wages at median experience premium (CI includes 0)

For occupations with the median experience premium (40 percent), a one-standard-deviation increase in AI exposure is associated with a 0.05 percentage point decline in wage growth.

Dallas Fed: AI wages not uniformly declining; augmentation offsets automation pressure

AI's impact depends on whether it automates or augments. For zero-experience-premium occupations, increased AI exposure is associated with -0.28pp reduction in wage growth. Wages in AI-exposed jobs not uniformly declining.

CEPR/BIS: AI boosts EU firm productivity 4%; higher wages per employee

AI adoption causally increases labour productivity levels by 4% on average. Employees in AI-using companies benefit through higher wages, both in total and per employee.

ICLE: small but significant positive wage effects in AI-exposed occupations

Small but statistically significant positive wage effects found across AI-exposed occupations; 35.9% of US workers used generative AI by December 2025.

A one-standard-deviation increase in Generative AI exposure is associated with a 0.6% decline in the hourly wage rate. For occupations with exposure derived solely from core tasks, a one-standard-deviation higher Generative AI exposure corresponds to a significantly greater decline in relative wage rates by 1.4%.

Althoff & Reichardt model: +21% long-run average wage increase from AI productivity

raising average wages by 21 percent

Jones & Tonetti (Stanford/NBER): AI output gains modest near-term — only 4% above trend by 2040

Despite the accelerating growth, the effects of A.I. on GDP per person are remarkably small for the next 20 to 40 years.

Imas (citing Benzell et al): Model shows 25% wage decline under full automation with low savings

wages fall by 25%, and long-run welfare drops by 16.5%

Stanford: small positive wage effects in AI-exposed jobs

Small positive wage effects identified for workers in AI-exposed occupations; adoption concentrated among younger, college-educated, higher-earning employees.

NBER (Gans/Goldfarb): O-ring model -- partial automation can raise wages via bottleneck task revaluation

Labour income can rise under partial automation because automation scales the value of remaining bottleneck tasks.

Autor (NBER): Further automation should raise wages in all 12 industrialized countries studied

falling labor share accounted for 16% of U.S. real wage growth between 1954 and 2019

Merali (Yale RCT): 8%/yr task time reduction from AI; ~20% US productivity boost/decade

Each year of AI model progress reduced task time by 8%. Access to any AI model increased Earnings Per Minute by 81.3%. Continued scaling could boost US productivity by ~20% over the next decade.

Revelio Labs: top-quartile salaries +30% vs bottom-quartile +10% since Jan 2023

Since January 2023, salaries at the top quartile of the wage distribution have grown by more than 30%. Over the same period, salaries at the bottom quartile have risen by only around 10%.

OECD/Filippucci: US AI labor productivity gains 0.4-1.3pp/yr

The United Kingdom and the United States may experience higher gains, ranging from 0.4 to 1.3 percentage points annually for the next 10 years.

Median annual wage for all occupations: $49,500. AI-exposed administrative and clerical wages grew 1.1% vs. 3.8% for non-AI-exposed occupations.

Galdin & Silbert: LLM signal erosion cuts worker surplus 4%, total 1%

LLMs erode labor market signaling on Freelancer.com: worker surplus declines 4%, employer surplus rises <1%, total surplus falls 1%. Signal degradation is a net-negative welfare channel.

Anthropic: Claude speeds tasks ~80%; projects 1.8% annual US productivity growth/decade

Claude speeds up individual tasks by about 80%. Extrapolating suggests 1.8% annual US productivity growth over the next decade.

AI-skilled workers command a 56% wage premium, up from 25% in prior year. AI roles median compensation at $157K vs. $49,500 all-occupation median.

CESifo RCT: GenAI boosts e-commerce sales 0-16.3% (TFP gains); larger for small sellers

Large-scale field experiments find treatment effects 0-16.3% on sales, mapping directly into TFP improvements.

Klump et al.: Meta-analysis of 53 studies (2,143 estimates) finds robot wage effect ~zero

The overall effect of industrial robots on wages is close to zero and insignificant. 53 papers, 2,143 estimations.

Sufficiently advanced AI could dramatically raise growth rates and lower labor share, breaking Kaldor Facts. Wages may rise or fall depending on returns to scale and direction of technical change.

Equitable Growth: 500 AI vendors audit finds surveillance pay spreading across sectors

Audit of 500 AI vendors finds surveillance pay spreading across healthcare, customer service, and logistics.

NBER (Autor/Thompson): Expertise framework shows automation has offsetting wage-employment effects

automation can simultaneously replace experts in some occupations while augmenting expertise in others.

NBER: LLM adoption shows precisely estimated zero wage effects over 2 years

Workplaces that adopted AI chatbots showed no significant difference in employment, early-career jobs, job churn, or worker mix. Difference-in-differences estimates for earnings and wages are all precisely estimated zeros, ruling out effects larger than 2%.

Korinek & Stiglitz: wage growth requires capital-augmenting AI

For the empirically plausible case that capital and labor are gross complements, raising wages requires capital-augmenting innovation rather than labor-augmenting.

QJE: AI assistance increases worker productivity by 15% on average

Access to AI assistance increases worker productivity, as measured by issues resolved per hour, by 15% on average, with substantial heterogeneity across workers.

Marguerit: Automation AI depresses low-skill wages; augmentation AI raises high-skill wages

Automation AI negatively impacts low-skilled wages; augmentation AI raises high-skilled wages.

Indeed: AI-exposed wages grew 1.2% vs 4.1% non-exposed

Posted wages for AI-exposed occupations (admin, data entry, basic accounting) grew 1.2% YoY vs. 4.1% for non-AI-exposed roles, suggesting wage suppression.

Bessen et al.: 9% cumulative earnings loss over 5yr from automation (reduced hours/separation)

Tenured workers cumulatively lose about 3,800 Euros in wage and salary earnings over five years on average (about 9% of one year's income). We find little change in wage rates.

NBER/Jiang: AI-exposed workers work 3.5 hrs/wk more; productivity gains captured by firms

When someone transitions to a job with high exposure to AI, they work 3.5 hours longer per week. Productivity gains captured by firms, not wages.

Walmart: investing in checkout/inventory automation; min wage $14/hr

Walmart's minimum starting wage is $14/hr while average U.S. associate wage reached $18.25 by 2025. The company invested in checkout and inventory automation but has not disclosed specific per-location staffing reduction figures.

AI exposure is concentrated among high-skill, high-wage occupations, but wage effects may cascade downward.

AI is unlikely to be a direct threat to wages; the root causes of sluggish wage growth are policy decisions that led to imbalanced employer power. Productivity growth has not historically caused higher unemployment or inequality.

UPS: 12K management jobs cut; driver top rate $49/hr under new contract

UPS announced 12,000 job cuts, primarily management and salaried positions, as part of a $1 billion cost-reduction effort. Full-time driver pay raised to $49/hr top rate under 2023 Teamsters contract.

In most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality. Higher-income workers may see disproportionate wage gains.

Otis et al.: No avg AI effect on Kenyan SME revenue; high performers +15%, low -8%

The paper reports no statistically significant average effect on revenues or profits. But effects are highly heterogeneous: high‑performing businesses at baseline appear to improve (roughly 15 percent), while low performers do worse (roughly 8-10 percent worse)

Acemoglu & Johnson: shared prosperity requires deliberate policy choices

Technology does not automatically benefit workers; shared prosperity requires deliberate policy choices. AI could follow historical pattern of concentrating gains among capital owners.

Goldman Sachs: AI to raise labor productivity ~15% when fully adopted