AI adoption, productivity and jobs: New evidence from firms

Background

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly reshaping discussions on productivity, employment and the future of work. Yet despite rapidly growing interest in AI, comparable international evidence on how firms are actually adopting AI technologies - and how business leaders expect these technologies to affect employment and productivity - remains limited.

This seminar will present new evidence from Firm Data on AI, a large-scale cross-country study based on surveys of more than 5,000 CEOs, CFOs and senior executives across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Australia. Using harmonized survey questions administered across four economy-wide business surveys, the paper examines firm-level AI adoption, executive use of AI technologies, and firms’ assessments of the realized and expected impacts of AI on employment and productivity.

The study finds that AI technologies are already widely used across businesses, with around 70 per cent of firms reporting active use of some form of AI. At the same time, most firms report little measurable impact so far on employment or productivity. However, executives anticipate significantly larger effects over the next three years, including notable productivity gains alongside reductions in employment growth.

The paper also highlights substantial differences between executives’ and employees’ expectations regarding AI’s labour market effects, raising broader questions about technological change, firm dynamics, productivity growth and the future of jobs.

Objectives

The seminar aims to:

• Present new international evidence on firm-level AI adoption and diffusion;
• Discuss how business executives assess the realized and expected impacts of AI on employment, productivity and output;
• Explore differences between current measurable effects and future expectations surrounding AI;
• Examine differences between executive and employee perceptions of AI’s labour market implications;
• Reflect on the implications of these findings for future research and policy discussions on AI and the world of work.

Speaker:

• Gregory Thwaites

Research Associate, Resolution Foundation, and Associate Professor, School of Economics, University of Nottingham

Gregory Thwaites is co-author of the paper Firm Data on AI, an NBER Working Paper examining AI adoption and impacts using large-scale executive surveys across four advanced economies.

Gregory Thwaites previously served as Research Director at the Resolution Foundation and Head of International Research at the Bank of England. His research focuses on macroeconomics, firm-level data, structural change, inequality and macroeconomic policy. He is co-author of the paper Firm Data on AI, which examines AI adoption and its employment and productivity impacts using large-scale executive surveys across four advanced economies.

Discussant:

• Rossana Merola

Macroeconomist, ILO Research and Statistics Department

Chair:

• Ekkehard Ernst

Chief Macroeconomist, ILO Research and Statistics Department

Reference Paper:

• Firm Data on AI (NBER Working Paper No. 34836) by Ivan Yotzov, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Steven J. Davis, Kevin M. Foster, Aaron Jalca, Brent H. Meyer, Paul Mizen, Michael A. Navarrete, Pawel Smietanka, Gregory Thwaites and Ben Zhe Wang.
• Interactive Data Dashboard accompanying the paper