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Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab just released an updated 140-page research paper, Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts About the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence. Using ADP payroll data through mid-2026, the authors examine employment shifts since ChatGPT’s release. One insight relates to a topic I’ve covered often in Talent Edge Weekly: AI’s impact on entry-level and early-career roles. Employment among workers ages 22–25 in highly AI-exposed occupations is now about 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with similarly aged workers in less-exposed occupations, up from 15% a year ago. The decline appears driven primarily by reduced hiring rather than increased separations. The declines are concentrated among younger workers in roles relying more on “codified knowledge” AI can increasingly reproduce, while experienced workers in those same occupations show no comparable decline and rely more on tacit knowledge built through judgment and experience. These insights reinforce the need to answer this question: as AI takes on more entry-level tasks, what work should replace them so early-career employees can still build the judgment and experience needed for future roles and strengthen the talent pipeline? As a bonus, here is a one-hour Stanford webinar on the updated research and its Canaries Dashboard, which tracks AI’s impact on hiring by occupation, age, and gender.
