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Anthropic
2026-08-24 07:18:09

Anthropic says AI has not pushed up unemployment, with a 12-month window on that view

Anthropic’s head of economic research, Peter McCrory, argues that AI has not caused an increase in U.S. unemployment so far, even as quality-adjusted AI output rose by more than 2,000% in both 2024 and 2025 and roughly one-fifth of U.S. firms have adopted AI in their operations. Writing in a recent long-form post, McCrory said the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 4.2% in June, a level he described as consistent with full employment, and framed AI at this stage as a skill-biased, labor-augmenting technology that expands human capability rather than replaces workers outright. He supported that view with labor-market data and prior Anthropic research. McCrory said occupations heavily exposed to AI, including roles tied to tasks Claude is frequently used to automate, have not seen unemployment deteriorate faster than other jobs. He also pointed to a rebound in software engineering job postings since May 2025. At the same time, he acknowledged that younger workers are facing a tougher job search in AI-exposed roles, while arguing that this cannot yet be pinned entirely on AI because the U.S. has also been going through a broad non-recession labor-market cooling since 2022. McCrory also outlined three future scenarios that could break the current pattern: a software singularity, an economic singularity and a Coase singularity. For now, he said persistent “bottlenecks” in tasks that AI still cannot automate remain the main reason labor income and firm structure have not been fundamentally displaced.

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Anthropic says AI has not pushed up unemployment, with a 12-month window on that view
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