Date of Award
12-2025
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Degree Name
Business Economics, BSBA
School
SBS
Department
Economics Department
Faculty Advisor
Sarah Tang
Abstract
This paper studies how artificial intelligence has reshaped occupational opportunities in the United States by analyzing changes in employment, median wages, and wage inequality across all occupations from 2014 through 2024. Using a difference-in-differences framework, I compare occupations associated with AI-related tasks to those not directly exposed to generative AI, with particular attention to the structural break introduced by the mainstream release of generative AI tools in 2022. The results show no statistically significant decline in employment among AI-exposed occupations, indicating that early adoption did not lead to measurable job displacement. Instead, the strongest effects appear in wage inequality. Among all occupations, AI exposure is associated with a significant widening of the wage gap after 2022, driven by disproportionate gains for high earners. This pattern does not persist in high-skill occupations alone, suggesting that mid-skill roles face greater pressure from partial automation. Overall, AI’s early labor-market impact operates through wage restructuring rather than employment loss.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Strom, Francesca A., "Is Artificial Intelligence Really Taking Our Jobs?" (2025). Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects. 48.
https://dc.suffolk.edu/undergrad/48
Comments
Dedicated to the professors who shaped my undergraduate research journey at Suffolk University.