A research paper by the U.S. Census Bureau compares entering the workforce before and after ChatGPT: wage losses are on the same order as a degree obtained in the middle of a recession.
A study by the United States Census Bureau, published in 2026, measures what has changed for young graduates since the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022. In the disciplines most exposed to automation — computer science, mathematics and statistics, networks, certain engineering expertise, journalism — the probability of obtaining a first job drops by five percentage points, and the initial income drops by 13% over a full quarter.
About half of this loss of income does not come from a lower wage on an equivalent basis, but from a shift towards less remunerative sectors such as catering or retailing. The economists cited compare the magnitude of the shock to that experienced by promotions that emerged during a major recession.
The effect is not general: the low-risk sectors, such as nursing or teaching, do not show comparable degradation. It is this asymmetry that drives the authors to see it as a targeted effect of AI rather than a mere slowdown in the labour market of young graduates.
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