Newshot Australia's central bank study: AI hits young workers first, especially in software and customer service roles
IT之家, November 15 — according to THE DECODER, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on Australia's overall job market remains limited for now, but for young workers just entering industries heavily affected by AI, such as software development, the employment situation has already begun to turn grim.
Mike Major (Mike Major) of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) conducted a study and built a job-market monitoring system focused on the groups most likely to be affected by AI first, including people new to the workforce and occupations with high AI exposure such as programming, clerical work and customer service.
According to the study, since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, the number of job postings has fallen across all occupation types, with the steepest declines in occupations most exposed to AI. Within this group, young workers aged 15 to 24 and recent university graduates have lower employment rates than older workers and relatively higher unemployment rates.
However, Major cautions that firm conclusions cannot yet be drawn. The study does not prove a direct causal link between the deteriorating employment situation and AI, and it measures the theoretical degree to which occupations are exposed to AI, not companies' actual use of AI. Factors such as post-pandemic economic cycles and adjustments to remote-work patterns may also affect the data.
Meanwhile, data from recruitment platform SEEK shows that AI is not only assisting existing work but also generating new demand for AI-related skills.
Multiple studies find similar trends, but AI is not the only cause
In August 2025, Stanford University published a study based on millions of U.S. payroll records that found a similar phenomenon. Since late 2022, the number of employed workers aged 22 to 25 in occupations highly exposed to AI has fallen by 13% relatively; for young software developers the decline was close to 20%. By contrast, more experienced workers in the same industry have remained largely stable, with some even seeing their employment situation improve.
IT之家 noted that a study published by Anthropic in March 2026 also found that among occupations susceptible to AI, hiring demand for young people aged 22 to 25 declined, with their probability of finding a job falling by about 14%. However, the study did not find a systematic rise in the overall unemployment rate. The researchers pointed out that a large gap remains between theoretical automation potential and AI's actual real-world application.
Anthropic itself offers a company-level case.
According to an internal assessment by the company, since early 2025 the share of new entry-level hires in its technical roles has fallen from 27% to 9%. As of August 2026, the cumulative task time executed by the company's internal AI agents had reached 6 times the working hours of its human employees.
Anthropic acknowledges that as a software company highly reliant on AI, its situation is atypical and cannot simply represent the entire job market.
Even so, researchers remain concerned about a phenomenon known as the "tragedy of the cognitive commons": if companies keep cutting entry-level positions, a shortage of experienced professionals could emerge in the future. The reason is that senior employees typically need to grow gradually from entry-level roles, and if companies stop hiring newcomers, the talent-development pipeline could be severed. Of course, this concern presumes that companies will still need these professionals in the future.
A large-scale study in Denmark covering 25,000 workers further corroborates the conclusion that AI has not yet had a noticeable impact on the overall economy. Although local AI usage has reached 64%, researchers found no measurable change in wages or working hours. Workers save on average only the equivalent of 2.8% of their working time per week.
However, an analysis in January 2026 of 10.6 million LinkedIn profiles and U.S. unemployment data also reminds people that the job-market slowdown should not be blamed entirely on AI.
A research team led by Morgan Frank of the University of Pittsburgh found that employment problems in occupations with high AI exposure had already emerged as early as early 2022, months before ChatGPT was released.
This means that macroeconomic factors — such as the shift in Federal Reserve monetary policy and the market adjustment after the pandemic-era hiring boom faded — may be more important than previously thought.
At the same time, AI is also creating new demand for jobs.
According to the World Economic Forum's (WEF) "Future of Jobs Report 2025," 77% of surveyed companies list upskilling employees as a priority rather than cutting positions through layoffs. The organization's researchers expect a net increase of 78 million jobs worldwide by 2030.
LinkedIn data also shows that within a year, the number of AI-related job postings on the platform grew sixfold.
Therefore, at this stage AI's impact on the job market is not simply the disappearance of positions; rather, workers in different occupations and at different experience levels are undergoing varying degrees of change. For young people just entering the workforce, traditional entry-level roles such as software development may be facing greater competitive pressure; for the job market as a whole, the new positions and skill demands brought by AI are also growing in tandem.
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