<\/p>\n
For nearly four years, the story Americans have been told about artificial intelligence has rarely strayed from one note.<\/p>\n
AI is going to take your job. AI is going to gut the white-collar middle class. AI is the reason your kid cannot land a first interview after college.<\/p>\n
That narrative has dominated commencement speeches, dinner tables, and every doom-tinged jobs report since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022.<\/p>\n
Layoff announcements got blamed on it. Hiring freezes got blamed on it. Empty inboxes for recent graduates got blamed on it.<\/p>\n
In my analysis of how this story has played out across earnings calls and economic releases over the past two years, the consistent thread has been fear, not data. The vibes have run far ahead of the numbers.<\/p>\n
And every time someone in finance suggested the AI worker apocalypse might be more complicated than the headlines, the response was the same. Sure, but the layoffs are real and the openings are gone.<\/p>\n
On May 19, a new piece of research broke that loop. Goldman Sachs (GS) published a finding so counterintuitive it almost contradicts what every worker has been told to feel since 2022.<\/p>\n
Why Goldman Sachs thinks the AI labor scare is misread<\/p>\n
The bank’s economists ran the numbers on the mismatch between where U.S. workers want to be and where the open jobs actually are. The result is the opposite of what almost everyone assumes.<\/p>\n
“Our occupation-level mismatch index has declined from its 2022 peak and is now slightly below its pre-pandemic level,” wrote Goldman economists Elsie Peng and Ronnie Walker in research circulated by Fortune.<\/p>\n
More AI:<\/p>\n
Micron sits at the center of a red-hot chip rallyIBM CEO sends blunt message on AI and quantum computingAnthropic CEO makes shocking admission about AI<\/p>\n
Translation: The labor market is doing a better job of matching people to open roles right now than it was the week ChatGPT launched.<\/p>\n
That matters because the mismatch index, a version of the Lazear-Spletzer measure used by macro economists for years, is one of the most honest gauges of labor-market stress. <\/p>\n
It does not care about vibes. It only cares about whether the workers and the jobs are in the same lanes.<\/p>\n
I ran the Goldman thesis against my own read of post-pandemic hiring patterns, and the math holds. In 2022, hospitals could not find nurses, while tech offices had more applicants than desks. AI then started chipping away at job openings in the white-collar categories that were already drowning in resumes.<\/p>\n
The result was less a wave of unemployment and more an accidental cleanup of a historic traffic jam.<\/p>\n
“The first stage of AI deployment has been fortuitously timed, because it coincided with a labor shortage in the most AI-exposed occupations,” Peng and Walker wrote.<\/p>\n
Goldman Sachs publication shows that AI isn’t about to take your job.<\/p>\n
Photo by Vithun Khamsong on Getty Images<\/p>\n
What the AI job openings shift means for your career<\/p>\n
The composition of U.S. openings has been quietly reshuffling since 2019. Physical-presence lanes have been filling up. Office lanes have been thinning out.<\/p>\n
The Goldman note quantifies the rerouting in numbers that should land for anyone watching their own paycheck.<\/p>\n
Roughly 300,000 more openings in health care, food preparation, and maintenance versus the 2019 baseline.Roughly 450,000 fewer openings in the office categories most exposed to AI substitution.A one-standard-deviation increase in AI substitution exposure is associated with 12% fewer job openings versus an occupation’s 2019 average.The sharpest declines hit computer and information workers, sales reps, and office supervisors.
\nSource: Goldman Sachs research published by Fortune<\/p>\n
The jobs gaining openings demand bodies in rooms, credentials, and physical training. The jobs losing openings are the ones a college graduate could once enter with a laptop and a degree.<\/p>\n
This is a rerouting, not a labor apocalypse.<\/p>\n
Why the next AI deployment wave may not be so kind<\/p>\n
Not everyone reads the same data the same way.<\/p>\n
Researchers at the New York Fed published their own analysis the same week and reached a more cautious conclusion.<\/p>\n
Related: Goldman Sachs reveals lurking risks as stock market surges<\/p>\n
“While job postings show a relative decline in vacancies in occupations with greater exposure to AI, that divergence began before the release of ChatGPT in late 2022,” wrote economists Richard Audoly, Miles Guerin, and Giorgio Topa in the bank’s Liberty Street Economics blog.<\/p>\n
In plain English, the white-collar opening drain may be a longer-running trend that AI walked into, not one it caused alone.<\/p>\n
Other corners of the labor data are even less worried. The sectors most exposed to AI are actually seeing some of the fastest job growth, Indeed chief economist Svenja Gudell told Fortune at the company’s Workplace Innovation Summit.<\/p>\n
What I keep coming back to in my reporting on this topic is the catch buried in the Goldman note itself. The reason the first wave of AI deployment did not visibly hurt the labor market is that the occupations AI most threatened were already short on workers. There was a built-in cushion.<\/p>\n
That cushion is now mostly used up.<\/p>\n
“The next stage of deployment will likely require more adaptation by the workforce,” Peng and Walker warned.<\/p>\n
For workers reading this in 2026, the practical takeaway is sharper than any single index. The mismatch is no longer the threat. The next wave of automation is going to land on occupations that are no longer running short on candidates, and the entry-level office roles that once absorbed new graduates are not coming back to their 2019 footprint.<\/p>\n
The window to retrain, pivot, or move toward roles AI cannot easily touch is open right now, but won’t be forever. <\/p>\n
While Goldman’s finding is genuinely reassuring regarding the past four years, it says nothing reassuring about the next four.<\/p>\n
Related: Goldman Sachs has crucial message for gold investors in 2026<\/p>\n
#Goldman #Sachs #good #news #U.S #workers #worried<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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