The New York Times published a new article Friday asking whether artificial intelligence tools have caused disruptions in the number of Americans who are employed. Incredibly, the article never mentions the word “wages.”
The piece, titled “A.I. Was Supposed to Come for Our Jobs. So Far, Evidence Is Mixed,” was written by Ben Casselman and starts with the question we all have:
Is artificial intelligence taking our jobs?
It’s arguably the single biggest question facing the labor market right now, all the more so after Tuesday’s midterm elections showed widespread public animosity toward A.I. and data centers, in particular.
The evidence, though, is far from clear.
Casselman notes that Microsoft recently offered voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, but white-collar industries like accounting, legal services, and finance mostly added jobs in October.
The article is mostly fine, even if it’s filled with way more questions than answers. Nobody knows long-term whether AI will put a significant dent in jobs:
Even if A.I. is taking a toll on hiring, it isn’t quite clear what that means. Are companies using A.I. to replace workers? Or merely pressing “pause” on hiring while they figure out where these new tools will be most useful? Or are they spending so much on tokens and A.I. infrastructure that they are looking to cut costs elsewhere?
The U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs in October, much higher than expected, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1%. By these measures, it seems that Americans are doing okay. There’s no double-digit unemployment as we’ve seen in historically bad times.
But the New York Times article completely misses one of the most important functions of AI in the job market of 2026. Artificial intelligence is being used by bosses to suppress wages. It’s something to dangle over the heads of workers to make sure they don’t ask for higher wages or step out of line. All you need to do is listen to the bosses themselves.
David Kelly, the Chief Global Strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management, appeared on CNBC back in September, where he spoke about the rise of AI. It was a surprisingly candid discussion.
“They think this is a scary economy,” Kelly said of workers. “They think they’re threatened by AI and they don’t have the guts, basically, to ask for a wage increase or to demand a wage increase in this economy.”
CNBC host Leslie Picker agreed with Kelly, noting workers recognize, “the machine could potentially do your job cheaper. So you better put your head down and keep doing the work.”
And there’s evidence that this fear is changing how workers think about their pay. A study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in September found that workers who feared losing their jobs to AI were also less likely to believe they had the leverage to negotiate higher wages.
Typically, low unemployment numbers result in rising wages. When most people have jobs, labor is scarce, and companies have to start offering higher salaries to attract workers. And workers are less fearful about getting fired or asking for a raise because they know there’s a very good chance they can get another job.
AI has seemingly upended that traditional cycle. Wages rose just 3.1% over the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the latest available annual inflation rate was 3.7% in September. That means workers are actually making less today than they were a year ago when you adjust for inflation.
Kelly said as much on CNBC a couple of months back: “So it looks, by the numbers, [like] it’s a very tight labor market, but it doesn’t feel that way to workers. And they don’t feel like they’ve got the ability to ask for wage increases. In fact, the wage number today, year-over-year, was the lowest since May of 2021.”
Again, the New York Times article is mostly fine in providing a snapshot of the confusion people are currently experiencing. There’s been no massive upheaval where AI is replacing every worker. But the newspaper fails to recognize another potential upheaval: AI could be weakening workers’ bargaining power long before its effects show up in the unemployment rate. Wages are already lower in inflation-adjusted terms, and the fear of being replaced by AI could make it even harder for workers to fight for higher pay.
The AI discussion is mostly centered around the most dramatic possibilities: Will it destroy humanity or create an environment where everyone is unemployed?
There’s a much more mundane world of possibility that doesn’t seem to break through in mainstream media: Maybe the middle class just gets hollowed out, and we spend a decade with a lower quality of life because AI is effective at suppressing wages. Maybe it results in some downsizing, but that doesn’t show up significantly in the unemployment numbers in relative terms because a massive generation like the baby boomers is retiring.
Maybe AI doesn’t change the world dramatically. Maybe everything is just a little worse for the average American as the ruling class all becomes trillionaires. Maybe. We don’t have a crystal ball. But there’s no doubt that some folks on the financial networks can see what’s happening.
