Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, REPORTS—AI linked to weaker early-career outcomes for graduates in most exposed majors, Census Bureau study finds, (Sep 18, 2026)

By WK Editorial Staff

The researchers said the magnitude of the earnings decline was comparable to losses experienced by graduates entering the workforce during a major recession.

A new working paper from the Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies suggests that the rise of generative artificial intelligence may already be reshaping the labor market prospects of recent college graduates, with the largest effects concentrated among graduates from highly AI-exposed fields such as computer science and information systems.

The study, Graduating into Disruption: Labor Market Outcomes for AI-Exposed College Majors, examined employment and earnings outcomes for more than 6.6 million bachelor's degree recipients and found that graduates from the most AI-exposed majors experienced sharp declines in employment and earnings following the public release of ChatGPT in late 2022.

Researchers analyzed graduates from institutions participating in the Census Bureau's Postsecondary Employment Outcomes database, which covers roughly 29 percent of U.S. bachelor's degrees awarded between 2016 and 2024. They linked those records with employment data and assigned AI exposure levels to majors based on the occupations graduates typically enter and the extent to which those occupations contain tasks that large language models can perform.

The authors found that labor market outcomes for graduates in the most AI-exposed decile of majors began diverging from those of less-exposed peers almost immediately after ChatGPT's introduction.

According to the study, graduates in those top-exposure majors saw their likelihood of obtaining employment in the quarter after graduation fall by approximately five percentage points relative to graduates in the bottom six exposure deciles. Initial quarterly earnings also declined by about 13 percent.

The researchers said the magnitude of the earnings decline was comparable to losses experienced by graduates entering the workforce during a major recession.

The study also found evidence of increased job switching among post-ChatGPT cohorts. The authors suggest that some graduates may initially have accepted lower-quality positions before later moving to better opportunities.

The paper stops short of concluding that AI is directly replacing large numbers of college graduates. Instead, it outlines several possible mechanisms, including reduced demand for entry-level tasks, changes in hiring and training practices, and a decline in the value of traditional educational signals as AI becomes more widely available.

"Highly exposed graduates have borne substantial costs in the initial adjustment to generative AI," the authors wrote, adding that understanding whether these workers ultimately recover will be critical to assessing AI's longer-term effects on workers and career pathways.

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