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AI-exposed jobs deteriorated before ChatGPT

Published: January 5, 2026 | arXiv ID: 2601.02554v1

By: Morgan R. Frank , Alireza Javadian Sabet , Lisa Simon and more

Potential Business Impact:

AI jobs changed before ChatGPT arrived.

Business Areas:
Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence, Data and Analytics, Science and Engineering, Software

Public debate links worsening job prospects for AI-exposed occupations to the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. Using monthly U.S. unemployment insurance records, we measure occupation- and location-specific unemployment risk and find that risk rose in AI-exposed occupations beginning in early 2022, months before ChatGPT. Analyzing millions of LinkedIn profiles, we show that graduate cohorts from 2021 onward entered AI-exposed jobs at lower rates than earlier cohorts, with gaps opening before late 2022. Finally, from millions of university syllabi, we find that graduates taking more AI-exposed curricula had higher first-job pay and shorter job searches after ChatGPT. Together, these results point to forces pre-dating generative AI and to the ongoing value of LLM-relevant education.

Country of Origin
πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ United States

Page Count
84 pages

Category
Economics:
General Economics