Despite dire warnings from CEOs and tech leaders, fears that generative AI is rapidly replacing millions of workers appear overblown.

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A joint study from Yale University’s Budget Lab and the Brookings Institution, as reported by The Financial Times, finds little evidence that the widespread adoption of ChatGPT and similar tools has displaced jobs across the U.S. economy since OpenAI’s chatbot launched in late 2022.

“We are not in an economy-wide jobs apocalypse right now, it’s mostly stable,” says Molly Kinder of the Brookings Institution, who co-authored the new research on AI’s labor impact. “That should be a reassuring message to an anxious public.”

The study, based on labor market data and tech-industry AI usage figures, concludes that generative AI has not had a more dramatic effect on employment than earlier technological breakthroughs like computers and the internet.

“Despite how quickly AI technology has progressed, the labor market over the past three years has been a story of continuity over change,” Kinder explained.

Martha Gimbel, who heads the Yale Budget Lab, echoed that view: “The labor market doesn’t feel great, so it feels correct that AI is taking people’s jobs. But we’ve looked at this many, many different ways — and we really cannot find any sign that this is happening.”

While tech workers are seeing shifts in the kinds of occupations available to them, the overall composition of U.S. jobs is not being reshaped at a historically unusual pace. “AI has, so far, not defied gravity,” Kinder added. “We are in very early days of companies figuring out how to redesign themselves with this technology.”

These findings stand in sharp contrast to proclamations of doom from high-profile tech executives.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has predicted unemployment could spike to 10%–20% within five years as AI wipes out half of all entry-level jobs in fields such as law, consulting, and finance. OpenAI chief Sam Altman has similarly warned that AI would eliminate entire job categories, including customer service roles.

However, entry-level jobs appear to be in at least some danger from AI.

A recent report by the British Standards Institution found 39% of business leaders had already cut entry-level roles due to AI, with 43% expecting more reductions within a year. Yet broader labor market data suggests otherwise: unemployment among recent graduates has risen, but their struggles to find work appear linked more to cyclical weakness than technological change.

Many economists argue that such predictions are exaggerated. MIT economist and Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu notes: “There is a lot of pressure on managers to do something with AI, and there is the hype that is contributing to it. But not many people are doing anything super creative with it yet.”

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Acemoglu added that AI firms have incentives to amplify the perception of rapid change to attract investment in computing infrastructure.

Even Goldman Sachs, which has estimated AI adoption could displace 6%–7% of U.S. workers, concluded the impact would likely be “transitory.”

The Yale Budget Lab plans to update its analysis monthly. As Gimbel cautions: “It is an open question [whether or not AI will change the labor market] and we should be monitoring this. But let’s not put the cart before the horse here.”

For now, the evidence suggests AI’s impact on jobs is incremental rather than catastrophic — offering more reason for measured monitoring than panic.