Goldman finds AI-displaced workers take longer to find new jobs, with older workers hit hardest

Goldman Sachs economist Pierfrancesco Mei, in a note published Thursday, reports that workers laid off from AI-exposed jobs since 2025 took about a month longer to find new work than other displaced workers. They were also roughly 10 percentage points more likely to still be unemployed a year after losing their job. Mei says these effects are "comparable in magnitude" to earlier waves of technological change. Older workers are hit hardest: those 35 and older took about five weeks longer to return to full-time work, against about three weeks for those under 35. Goldman's method is indirect, since no government survey asks whether AI caused a layoff. It scored occupations and industries for AI exposure and treated the top 30% as likely AI-displaced. Separately, Stanford researchers Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen, using ADP payroll data, find that the pressure shows up mainly in hiring, with fewer young workers hired into exposed jobs rather than more layoffs. Worth a reader's time because the two findings describe different parts of the same labor market.