College graduates in the fields most exposed to AI have had a harder time finding a first job since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022. Economists at the US Census Bureau reached that conclusion by comparing how graduates fared before and after the chatbot's release.
The most exposed majors include computer science, mathematics, statistics, some engineering programs, computer networking, and journalism.
What they found
In the tenth of majors most exposed to AI, the probability that a graduate finds a first job fell by five percentage points. First earnings over a full quarter dropped by 13 percent.
Roughly half of the pay decline comes from graduates moving into lower-paying industries, such as hospitality and retail. The Register compares those prospects to the ones graduates face in a recession.
The authors also note that survey data on STEM departments suggest enrollment in some of the most exposed programs has started to fall.
Reading it carefully
The authors write that other factors may be at work. Changes in self-employment or in enrollment in graduate school could account for up to half of the five-point drop in employment.
They also caution against projecting a short-term trend into the future, since history shows that many of today's jobs did not exist a few decades ago. The paper is numbered CES-WP-26-56.
