Anthropic Study Finds AI Job Displacement Still Minimal

Anthropic published research by Maxim Massenkoff and Peter McCrory measuring the gap between what LLMs can theoretically automate and what they actually do in practice. The headline number: computer programmers sit at 75% task coverage by Claude, but across all occupations only a third of theoretically automatable tasks show real-world AI usage. No statistically significant rise in unemployment has appeared among highly exposed workers since ChatGPT launched in late 2022. One finding cuts against the optimism though - a 14% drop in job-finding rates for 22-to-25-year-olds entering exposed fields, barely significant but hard to ignore. The demographic skew is striking too: workers most exposed to AI automation earn 47% more on average and are disproportionately female, which runs counter to the usual automation-hits-low-wage framing that shaped previous waves of labor disruption research.