Having spent a decade at the Fed, I know what the labor market looks like when policy is tightened. So, consider March 2022, when the FOMC began raising rates. Job postings for those occupations most exposed to AI peaked at the same time and began to fall. ChatGPT would not exist for another eight months.
I bring this up because there is widespread belief and panic that AI is destroying entry-level white-collar work and college degrees are no longer worth it. Some will cite work from Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab, which reports that workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations are running roughly 19 percent behind peers in less-exposed fields, a gap that has widened over the past year.
