Stanford and King's College London study of 41 countries: AI adopting firms grow senior staff while the junior share falls
AI is creating jobs, just not for young workers. Companies adopting AI are hiring more people overall, per a new Stanford and King's College London study across 41 countries. But the gains go to the top: Senior employment: +6.7% over 5 years Junior employment: -3% The share of junior workers at those companies fell 1.9 percentage points.
Context
One of the first global studies of AI and jobs finds adoption shifts hiring toward experienced workers rather than cutting jobs overall, which matters for anyone starting a career.
The working paper, "How Does AI Change Labor Demand? Evidence from 41 Countries," is by Bharat Chandar of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and Bouke Klein Teeselink of King's College London. Stanford posted it on September 21, and King's College London announced it on October 6. The authors infer AI adoption from job ads that say applicants will need to use generative AI.
Deep dive
The study analyzes 1.25 billion job postings and 154 million employment records across 41 countries, comparing foreign affiliates of companies that adopted generative AI with similar affiliates that did not. According to the paper, the junior share of employment at adopting affiliates starts to fall after ChatGPT's release and is 1.9 percentage points lower than at the comparison group by March 2026.
The authors say the decline comes mainly from growth in senior employment, which rises 6.7%, rather than from a fall in junior jobs. The paper puts junior employment 2.5% lower, not the roughly 3% in the viral post, and says that estimate is not statistically significant. In his summary, Chandar writes that adopting firms end up with about 3.3% more employees overall, a marginally significant result that suggests modest productivity gains.
Chandar also writes that the junior share fell in 23 of the 31 countries with precise enough estimates, and the drop was statistically significant in seven, including the United States, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. He says effects for juniors look more negative in richer, more digitized countries and less negative where labor markets are more rigid, but calls these correlations mostly suggestive.
The paper also finds senior employment shifting toward occupations more exposed to AI, while its estimates for juniors point the other way.
What to expect next
The paper is a working paper and has not been through peer review, so watch for revisions and for other teams testing the same question with different data.
The key open question is whether the drop in the junior share deepens over time. If firms keep adding senior staff while holding junior hiring flat, the pipeline that trains future senior workers could shrink, which is a concern for policymakers and new graduates alike.