Global Economics Comment Is AI Impacting Global Labor Markets

Economics Research 19 August 2026 | 12:29AM EDT

Global Economics Comment: Is AI Impacting Global Labor Markets?

n Our prior work has found visible but narrow AI-related labor market impacts in Sarah Dong | the US, but evidence in other economies is more limited. In this Global Economics Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

Comment, we assess the extent to which AI is creating labor market headwinds Joseph Briggs | outside of the US. Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

n After extracting a common signal from eleven adoption surveys, we find that adoption rates are quite similar across DMs. France and the US lead with adoption rates around 20%, while adoption rates in other DMs fall in the 15-20% range and EM adoption rates are slightly lagging at 10-15%. n Using official cross-country labor market data, we find similar (albeit generally more muted) labor market impacts as those documented in the US. We find a negative correlation between AI exposure scores and change in job openings since 2022H2. We also observe employment underperformance in non-US DMs in the information services industry and other high-exposure subsectors such as call centers, management consulting, and advertising. n To size the overall hiring headwind at a country level, we regress occupation-level employment growth on our detailed occupation AI exposure scores in a cross-country panel. A 10% AI exposure score is associated with only a 0.1pp drag to annual occupational headcount growth in France, Canada, and the US, with negligible effects elsewhere. Negative effects are more visible after restricting to entry-level employees or occupations with high displacement risk, but global AI-related hiring headwinds still appear confined to a narrow set of industries and workers.

Is AI Impacting Global Labor Markets?

The impacts of artificial intelligence on labor markets are a major question for the labor market and economic outlook. While much of the focus has been on the US— where richer labor market data point to visible labor market effects that are still narrowly confined to a limited set of industries—there are also questions about how AI is affecting labor markets in other economies.

In this Global Economics Comment, we consider a harmonized set of indicators to assess the extent to which AI is creating global labor market headwinds.

The timing and extent of AI-driven labor headwinds naturally depends on the rate of AI adoption among firms. The main challenge to comparing adoption across

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Goldman Sachs Global Economics Comment

countries is that survey measures are inconsistent in adoption definitions and the samples they target, so adoption levels often differ wildly across surveys. To overcome this limitation, we compile 11 surveys that measure AI adoption across countries and extract an ordinal ranking using the Bradley-Terry model (an algorithm which statistically constructs an overall ranking based on the observed pairwise rankings in unbalanced surveys where adoption is measured inconsistently).

After rescaling around the OECD’s adoption survey—the most globally comprehensive measure in our compiled data—we unsurprisingly find that major DMs are ahead of other countries in deploying AI with adoption rates between 15-20% (Exhibit 1). Among DMs, France, the US, the Netherlands, and the UK score at the top end of this range, while Italy, Japan, and New Zealand score at the bottom end. Among major EMs, we estimate adoption rates between 10-15%.

Exhibit 1: France, the US, the Netherlands, and the UK Lead Adoption

Source: Data compiled by Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research

To identify whether AI is presently causing a pullback in labor demand, we regress Indeed.com industry job openings for major DMs on our industry-level AI exposure scores. We find that industries with greater exposure to AI automation are associated with slower job openings growth since the second half of 2022, with a more negative relationship in Germany, Australia, and the US (Exhibit 2). This cross-industry result confirms…