Generative AI may be reshaping early careers before its full economic footprint is visible. Recent US studies — including Brynjolfsson, Chandar & Chen’s (2025) Canaries in the Coal Mine — show employment declines for young workers in AI-exposed roles, suggesting a new form of “seniority-biased technological change.”
This project will provide the first European replication and extension of these findings. Leveraging a high-frequency payroll dataset by Acerta (2021–2025), enriched with AI exposure measures, we will track entry-level employment trends relative to older cohorts. Results will directly compare Europe to the US, assessing whether EU labour market institutions buffer the effects.
This project is part of the next cohort of @Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute, a think tank focused on understanding and shaping how societies adapt to the economic and social transformations driven by AI. Through this research, we will examine emerging trends, identify challenges and opportunities, and develop actionable insights that can help inform educators, employers, policymakers, and learners. We look forward to contributing to the broader conversation on the future of work and education and sharing our findings with the community.
