An Apollo study by Torsten Sløk and Sania Edlich reveals that AI's primary labor market impact is suppressing wage growth rather than causing job losses. Across 321 occupations, jobs highly exposed to AI saw real wage growth lag by 6.7% after 2023, resulting in an estimated $28 billion annual impact. This squeeze disproportionately affects lower-income earners, with the bottom quartile experiencing a 10.7% relative wage drop, while top earners see no significant effect.
AI wage suppression effects
- ▪The Apollo Global Management study found that employment levels in occupations highly exposed to AI showed no statistically significant change after 2023.
- ▪An analysis of 321 occupations by Apollo Global Management Chief Economist Torsten Sløk and analyst Sania Edlich found that wages in jobs highly exposed to AI grew 6.7% more slowly after 2023 than in low-exposure occupations.
- ▪The Apollo Global Management study estimated the aggregate annual labor-income impact of AI wage suppression at approximately $28 billion, affecting around 5.8 million workers.
Income-based wage disparities
- ▪The Apollo Global Management study found that the wage growth gap after 2023 was 10.7% in the bottom wage quartile, 5.4% in the second quartile, and 4.0% in the third quartile.
- ▪Service workers faced a relative wage decline of 24.3% in the Apollo Global Management study, representing the sharpest drop among the occupational categories analyzed.
- ▪The Apollo Global Management study found no statistically significant wage growth effect from AI exposure in the top earnings quartile.
Anthropic Economic Index methodology
- ▪The authors of the Apollo Global Management study noted limitations in their methodology, including measuring exposure from a single company's usage data and matching only 321 of roughly 800 occupations.
- ▪The Apollo Global Management study matched 321 occupations to labor statistics data from 2015 to 2025 using the Anthropic Economic Index, which measures observed AI usage from actual model interactions.
Corporate hiring practices
- ▪Goldman Sachs reported faster declines in job openings in fields exposed to AI substitution, while US statisticians found a 0.2% fall in jobs across 18 exposed occupations.
- ▪Former IBM Chief Human Resources Officer Diane Gherson stated that companies are quietly hiring fewer people into high-attrition, lower-wage roles rather than announcing layoffs.
Accounting treatment of severance
- ▪Former IBM Chief Human Resources Officer Diane Gherson stated that severance can be booked as a one-off restructuring charge that investors discount, whereas retraining lands in quarterly operating expenses.
- ▪Former IBM Chief Human Resources Officer Diane Gherson noted that corporate accounting treatments make cutting staff look better on paper to investors than reskilling employees.
AI-driven business formation surge
- ▪Apollo Global Management Chief Economist Torsten Sløk stated that AI is helping fuel a surge in new business formations by lowering startup costs for tasks like web development and legal drafting.
- ▪Apollo Global Management Chief Economist Torsten Sløk conceded that the productivity payoff of AI remains unproven, as profit margins outside the largest technology companies have not yet risen.
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