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AI is reshaping the career ladder from the bottom up
In software development, the occupation most exposed to AI, headcount for workers aged 22 to 25 has fallen about 20 percent since late 2022, while every older cohort in the same job has held steady or grown.
Source: Brynjolfsson, Chandar and Chen, Canaries in the Coal Mine?, Stanford Digital Economy Lab, November 2025. Based on ADP payroll data through September 2025.
Series reconstructed from the paper's Figure 1 and anchored to its reported endpoints. The pattern is relative and the authors note it may be partly driven by factors other than AI.
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