AI Is Costing the U.S. 16,000 Jobs a Month, Goldman Sachs Says

Goldman Sachs has put a number on the AI labor squeeze, and it is no longer theoretical. New research from the bank finds AI is already a measurable drag on the U.S. job market, erasing roughly 16,000 net jobs per month over the past year, with the pain falling hardest on Gen Z and entry-level workers.

The substitution-versus-augmentation math

Goldman’s breakdown shows AI substitution wiped out roughly 25,000 jobs per month in the past year, while augmentation added back about 9,000. The net is the 16,000 figure that markets are now digesting.

The shift has nudged the unemployment rate up by 0.1 percentage point, according to the Goldman team. Annualized, that is close to 200,000 jobs that simply are not getting created.

Who is getting hit

Telephone operators, insurance claims clerks, and bill collectors face the highest substitution risk, with customer service representatives and data entry staff close behind. These are the exact roles entry-level workers fill first.

Gen Z workers are disproportionately concentrated in the routine, white-collar, and administrative roles, such as data entry, customer service, legal support, and billing, that AI is best at automating, and without accumulated experience they have little buffer against displacement.

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The offset Goldman flags

Goldman’s economists were careful to note that the true aggregate impact of AI is likely smaller than their estimates suggest, since the analysis does not fully capture the offsetting hiring surge tied to AI infrastructure investments in data centers, power systems, and construction.

Looking at occupations with high augmentation potential, Goldman estimates AI has added roughly 9,000 jobs per month, with education workers, judges, and construction managers topping that list because those roles require physical presence, judgment, or interpersonal skills that AI cannot fully replicate.

Corroborating signals

A separate employer survey cited by Morgan Stanley found that companies across five sectors deemed most susceptible to near-term AI disruption reported a net 4% reduction in jobs, with eliminations highest among early-career employees with little to no previous work experience.

A November 2025 study by Erik Brynjolfsson and researchers at Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab found a 16% decline in early-career employment across the most AI-exposed occupations since late 2022, and employment among developers aged 22 to 25 has fallen nearly 20% from its late-2022 peak.

Options market and stocks to watch

Watch NVDA and DELL as the data-center and AI infrastructure buildout is the main offset Goldman cites against the headline labor drag.

Watch CRM after Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff confirmed the company cut roughly 4,000 customer-service positions after AI agents began handling about half of customer interactions, a template other software vendors may follow.

Watch NOW for the opposite read, given ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott’s pledge at Davos not to lay off employees even as the 30,000-employee company adopts Agentic AI and automates certain functions.

Watch MSFT and GOOG as the platform providers monetizing the substitution trend, with other news on enterprise AI rollouts likely to keep moving these names.

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