Workers who lost jobs likely tied to AI since 2025 took about a month longer to find new work than other laid-off workers, according to a note by Goldman Sachs economist Pierfrancesco Mei reported by Fortune on October 30. They were also roughly 10 percentage points likelier to still be unemployed a year later. Because no survey asks about AI directly, Goldman scored over 15,000 people in a federal survey who lost jobs involuntarily between 2016 and 2025 by their occupation’s AI exposure, their industry’s AI adoption and whether the position was eliminated, treating the top 30 percent as likely AI losses. For job losses before 2023, when AI use began to rise, the two groups showed no significant gap.

The gap was wider for older workers. Those 35 and older took about five weeks longer than other displaced workers to return to full-time work, against about three weeks for those under 35, and older workers who were rehired more often landed in jobs just as exposed to AI. Mei called the effects comparable to earlier waves of new technology and “long-lasting.” Labor Department figures released in August show the age pressure across all layoffs. By January 2026, 72.9 percent of long-tenured displaced workers aged 25 to 54 were working again, compared with 57.3 percent of those aged 55 to 64.