American workers identified by Goldman Sachs as likely to have been displaced by artificial intelligence are experiencing longer searches for new employment. The bank classified likely cases using occupational exposure to AI, industry adoption rates and whether positions had been eliminated.
Among those displaced since 2025, finding another job took roughly a month longer than for other displaced workers. Their probability of remaining unemployed a year later was around ten percentage points higher. Workers aged 35 and over took about five additional weeks to regain full-time employment, compared with about three additional weeks for younger workers.
Goldman economist Pierfrancesco Mei compared these early effects with the lasting damage associated with previous waves of technological change. Earlier research, drawing on individual-level data dating back to 1979, found that technology-displaced workers subsequently experienced slower growth in inflation-adjusted earnings and persistently greater risks of further unemployment.
Separately, some employers are restoring positions eliminated because of AI, a reversal sometimes called the “AI boomerang”. Recruitment firm Robert Half reported examples across finance, marketing, law and health, with employers citing unexpectedly high requirements for human supervision and the technology's inability to reproduce organisational knowledge.
Klarna resumed recruiting human customer service representatives last year after its chief executive acknowledged that reliance on an AI chatbot to cut costs had gone too far. Employment experts recommend that workers considering a return negotiate pay and training, seek clarity about future AI-related staffing plans, and consider contractual protection if their position is terminated again.
