AI and NYC Jobs

Kusha Navadar (0:10)

It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Kusha Navadar filling in for Brian today. Now let's look at the local impact of AI on the economy. With all the attention on the chances of AI going rogue and causing catastrophic damage to humanity, it seems like concern over AI's impact on jobs is taking a back seat. And at least so far, that jobs catastrophe doesn't seem to be happening here except for one category which we'll get into.

Joining me now to talk about the impact of AI on jobs and the overall picture for New York City's economy is Greg David, a contributor and reporter covering fiscal and economic issues for The City Reporter, and the Director of the Business and Economics Reporting Program at Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Greg, welcome back to the show.

Greg David (1:02)

Thank you very much.

Kusha Navadar (1:03)

So before we get to the bad news, on the good side of the ledger, is there job growth overall?

Greg David (1:10)

There is job growth in New York. That's not huge job growth, but there is job growth. And of course, if AI were wiping out thousands of jobs, we should be seeing job declines, but we don't see job declines. We don't even see them in the areas that we think are adopting AI the most.

Tech companies presumably, finance companies, et cetera. So for the moment, there is no job up, pop a lips in sight.

Kusha Navadar (1:38)

Which I think might be surprising to some folks to hear, but there is another side to this story. So the Center for an Urban Future did a new report about the bad news in this.

Bad for everyone who studied coding, I suppose. There are no more entry level tech jobs to be had. Is that right?

Greg David (1:58)

There are many fewer. And the Center came up with a great insight that ads for entry level tech jobs in New York City have plunged by half in the last few years.

Ads for entry level tech jobs with AI experience are up. And you know, of course, this is part of a broader thing that's happening in the economy, which is that jobs for all entry level positions are down. Very hard for college graduates to get jobs, for example, takes quite a while. But it isn't exactly clear what's going on. But the best people I talk to would say a couple of very important things. One of which is the companies that are using AI most aggressively are companies that are expanding so they're hiring people, not getting rid of people. Secondly, big corporations are beginning to figure out what a lot of people have been suggesting for a long time.

Instituting AI throughout a large organization is incredibly hard. It's not like your workers have nothing to do all day. So you have to retrain them and that is going to be a very long process.

Kusha Navadar (3:21)

So we're going to... Yeah, no, sorry, go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead.

Greg David (3:24)

And the third thing is that the people who have probably stopped hiring are those who think they're going to employ AI, but haven't yet and therefore, if AI doesn't work the way it doesn't do, save them as much time or effort as they think, maybe the job wipeout won't happen there either. Maybe.

Kusha Navadar (3:45)

You covered three things. The companies using AI most aggressively are expanding, the corporations realizing putting AI in there is very difficult, and the people that stopped hiring, partially some of them might be because they think that they're going to implement AI. We're going to get to some more of those pieces in a moment, listeners. I'd love to tease out something that you said before all that, Greg. You said that entry-level tech jobs are down, that the ads in New York, this was super interesting, down by half in the city for entry-level tech jobs. But then you also said that jobs, in general, entry-level jobs are down. So is it possible to tease out if it's the tech jobs specifically that are down by more?

Greg David (4:27)

Yes. The Center for Urban Future report says tech jobs are down the most. It is the biggest decline. And why that's really important is and why the Center for Urban Future spends so much time on this, is that entry-level tech jobs were a path to really good-paying jobs for people without the fanciest degrees, people who got associates degrees, people who went back and got software training programs of which there are many very good ones in New York. And these people, you know, were immediately launched onto a middle-class life. I remember a couple years ago, I wrote a story about a woman who had just gotten her associate's degree at LaGuardia College.