The Chicago Fed’s Economic Mobility Project hosted Workers and AI Impact: How Do Past Forecasts Compare to the Present Reality?, a virtual event during which Kristen Broady, director of the Economic Mobility Project, presented recent research examining how employment and wages changed from 2019 to 2024 across occupations with varying levels of automation risk and AI applicability.

The research compares earlier predictions about which occupations were most susceptible to computerization with newer measures of AI applicability based on Microsoft Copilot usage. The findings complicate a simple job-displacement narrative: Occupations with high AI applicability experienced employment and wage growth over the period studied, while occupations with higher automation-risk scores generally had weaker employment outcomes. Across risk categories, wages increased, suggesting that exposure to AI and automation does not translate automatically into job loss or wage decline. Instead, these measures may be better understood as indicators of occupational restructuring, task change, and uneven adjustment across the labor market.

The presentation was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Jim Lecinski (Clinical Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University) with Antwi Akom (Founding Director of the University of California San Francisco/San Francisco State University’s Social Innovation and Urban Opportunity Lab), Edward Colgate (Walter P. Murphy Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University), and Scott Ransom (Senior Director for the Industry and Innovation Ecosystem for the HAND ERC at Northwestern University).