Workers pushed out of jobs exposed to artificial intelligence wait longer to find new work than other laid off workers, according to new research from Goldman Sachs. Goldman economist Pierfrancesco Mei found that people displaced from AI exposed jobs since 2025 needed roughly a month longer to land a new role. They were also about 10 percentage points more likely to still be out of work a year after losing their jobs. The findings were reported by Fortune and covered by TheStreet on 1 November. Goldman compared the pattern with earlier rounds of technological change and found a similar gap in past episodes, when workers displaced by new technology also took longer to return to work.
Mei had reached a similar result in April 2026. In that earlier note, workers who lost jobs to technology took about a month longer to get hired again, and earned more than 3 percent less in real terms once they did. Mei blamed what he called occupational downgrading. Many of those workers ended up in roles that used fewer of their analytical and people skills than the jobs they had left. The new research extends that picture with a larger set of displaced workers and a longer look at what happened to them after they left.
Goldman findings on displaced workers
Goldman based the newest findings on the Displaced Worker Supplement, a government survey run every two years since 1984 alongside the Current Population Survey, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The survey tracks what happens to people after an involuntary layoff. It does not ask whether artificial intelligence cost someone a job, so Goldman used a composite measure of AI exposure to identify workers who were likely displaced from AI exposed roles. The bank found no meaningful gap in outcomes for job losses before 2022, when broad AI adoption began to take hold. The gap appeared in the years after that point.
Age made a clear difference in the results. Laid off workers aged 35 and older from AI exposed jobs needed about five more weeks than other displaced workers to get back into full time work. For workers under 35, the delay was closer to three weeks. The bank noted that the same age pattern appeared in earlier technology shakeups, when older workers also had the hardest time returning. The wider government numbers tell a similar story. Some 7.4 million workers were displaced between January 2023 and December 2025, up from 6.3 million in the previous survey period. Among people who had held their jobs for at least three years, those aged 55 and older were far less likely to be working again by January 2026 than workers aged 25 to 54.
Goldman data on young workers
Younger workers who do get laid off are faring better, at least for now. The bank found that they took fewer temporary jobs on the way back to full time work and were less likely to supplement their income with a second job. Mei flagged that as some relief, given how much concern has built up around the threat to new graduates. The larger problem for young people may arrive before they are ever hired. Stanford researchers using ADP payroll data found in August that employment for workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI exposed occupations sits about 19 percent below where it would have been had it kept pace with peers in less exposed jobs. The gap appears to stem mostly from less hiring, rather than layoffs.
Harvard researchers found a similar pattern inside companies. Firms that adopted generative AI cut junior headcount by about 7.7 percent within six quarters, while senior staffing held steady. In a June survey by GMAC, a third of employers said they had used AI to handle some entry level work instead of hiring a person. College students are increasingly choosing majors that lead to jobs with lower AI exposure, Goldman found, though the bank cautioned that it is still too early to judge the full impact.
What Goldman research does not prove
Employers are certainly talking about AI more than ever. Companies cited it in 120,136 announced job cuts through September, roughly 21 percent of all cuts and the top reason given this year, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas. It made up only about 9 percent of cuts in September itself. Tech firms led all industries. Goldman also noted a blind spot in its own data. The research only captures workers who held a job before losing one, which means some of the effect may show up in roles that simply never get filled.