Goldman Sachs analysts said this month that AI could displace 9% of the labor force.
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Goldman Sachs economists see AI reshaping the labor market.
Its latest analysis says that older workers who’ve lost jobs to AI face a difficult path.
Economists at the bank also note that older workers tend to return to roles at risk of disruption.
Goldman Sachs sees the job market of the future shaped by the impacts of artificial intelligence, and the bank says the technology will affect some workers more than others.
In an era of AI-driven layoffs , the road back to work for some AI-displaced workers could be particularly rough, Pierfrancesco Mei, a US economist at the investment bank said in a note.
“We find that workers displaced from AI-exposed jobs face more difficult transitions back into employment than other displaced workers,” Mei wrote. “They take about a month longer to find new jobs and are roughly 10pp more likely to remain unemployed a year after displacement.”
Earlier in October, the bank also predicted that 9% of workers will be displaced by AI in the coming years, up from the 6% to 7% it forecast last year.
Mei’s team analyzed data that included over 15,000 displaced workers laid off between 2016 and 2025. They noted that their data from 2023 to 2025 likely covers the first wave of workers whose jobs were lost to AI.
“Younger AI-displaced workers took about three weeks longer than other displaced workers to return to full-time employment, compared with about five weeks longer for older AI-displaced workers,” Mei noted. “They also experienced a smaller increase in the probability of cycling through multiple jobs during the transition or holding a second job alongside their new full-time position.”
One bright spot is that, according to Mei’s findings, college students appear to be choosing majors with less exposure to AI disruption, including healthcare and engineering over previously stable areas of study like computer science.
This trend of reorienting skills toward a future labor market may lead to more positive economic development in the years ahead. However, Mei’s team isn’t optimistic about older generations who can’t yet retire, particularly given their historical analysis of similar economic times.
“AI-displaced workers are significantly more likely to leave their prior occupation and industry altogether, likely reflecting reduced demand for the jobs from which they were displaced,” Mei added. “But upon reemployment, these workers—especially older ones—have so far increasingly moved into roles with similar or even higher AI exposure.”
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