Al Jazeera reporter Somesh Jha highlights the work of research associate Georgios Petropoulos, who is examining the ways in which artificial intelligence can impact jobs. “His work has shown that in past industrial revolutions too, the displacement of jobs might have dominated in the short run,” writes Jha, “but in the long term, when the markets adapt to the automation shock, increased productivity actually sets the stage for more employment opportunities.”
A study by Prof. David Autor and his colleagues have found that the pandemic narrowed the wage gap between America’s highest and lowest paid workers, reports Geoff Colvin for Fortune. The study also found “wages of the least educated workers increased more than the wage of the most educated workers, reducing the college wage premium,” writes Colvin.
Prof. John Horton and his colleagues have found that increases in Uber fares only benefit drivers for a limited amount of time, reports Kevin Lewis for The Boston Globe. “They found that fare increases initially provided drivers with higher hourly earnings, but that boost wore off after a couple months,” writes Lewis. “With the higher rates, drivers tried to work more hours and passengers used the service less, reducing the average time each driver was matched with passengers.”
Wired reporter Will Knight spotlights a new working paper by graduate students Shakked Noy and Whitney Zhang examining the impact of providing office workers access to ChatGPT for use in a series of office tasks. The researchers found “people with access to the chatbot were able to complete the assigned tasks in 17 minutes, compared to an average 27 minutes for those without the bot, and that the quality of their work improved significantly,” writes Knight.
Bloomberg reporters Alex Tanzi and Mackenzie Hawkins spotlight a paper by graduate student Evan J. Soltas and his colleague Gopi Shah Goda discussing Covid-19’s impact on the labor market. The researchers “found that workers who miss a full week because of COVID are about 7 percentage points less likely to be employed a year later,” writes Tanzi and Hawkins.
New research by Prof. David Autor explores how the wage gap narrowed during the Covid-19 pandemic, reports Justin Lahart for The Wall Street Journal. Lahart writes that the findings suggest that “even as the pandemic fades, competition for low-wage workers will be more intense than before the pandemic. That could lead to further reductions in income inequality, raise labor costs at firms that employ low-wage workers, and reshape the U.S. business landscape.”
In an article for Fast Company, Prof. Kate Kellogg and Prof. Erin Kelly, along with Boston University lecturer Constance Hadley, explore how employers can help encourage spontaneous interactions among employees. “By giving more attention to cultivating employee relationships and network ties at work, leaders can help create a hybrid workplace that offers the best of both worlds,” they write.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Erin Kelly shares her research on the impact of remote work. “The challenge is setting boundaries and feeling it’s acceptable to set them, and that requires deliberate company policies,” writes Kelly.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Tony Dokoupil of CBS News about how the rise of artificial intelligence could change the quality of jobs. "What we've seen over the last four decades in the U.S. and many industrialized economies is what economists call labor market polarization, which means the hollowing out of the middle set of jobs,” says Autor. The "hollowing out" of the middle has led to some in the labor market moving up and making more money, while others are now making less — and "that's especially where the pain happens," Autor adds.
Prof. David Autor speaks with ABC News reporter Max Zahn about whether new AI technologies could displace workers. "The thing we shouldn't be worried about at present or for quite a while is the quantity of jobs," said Autor. "We should be worried about the quality of jobs."
A study co-authored by Senior Lecturer Donald Sull found that the top factor in employee retention is corporate environment, reports Ellen Rosen for The New York Times. Sull says that a toxic work culture was “10 times more predictive of having a higher-than-industry-average attrition rate than compensation.”
Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Daron Acemoglu and his co-authors explore their research demonstrating that “the biggest shift when a chief executive with a business degree takes charge is a decline in wages and the share of revenues going to labor.” Acemoglu and his co-authors note that while many business schools have updated their offerings to include more ethics courses, they emphasize the importance of “being aware of what managers with business degrees used to do is an important step in reflecting on how we can build better programs.”
MIT researchers have found that “automation is the primary reason the income gap between more and less educated workers has continued to widen,” reports Ellen McGirt for Fortune. “This single one variable…explains 50 to 70% of the changes or variation between group inequality from 1980 to about 2016,” says Prof. Daron Acemoglu
The Economist highlights several studies by MIT researchers on income inequality and wages in the U.S., noting that “Clem Aeppli of Harvard and Nathan Wilmers of MIT found that earnings inequality basically reached a plateau after 2012.” Additionally, Prof. David Autor and his colleagues have found that wages for the bottom half of workers have been growing roughly two percentage points faster than for the upper half of workers.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu and his colleagues have found that “managers educated at business schools were more likely to favor shareholders over employees,” writes University of London Prof. André Spicer for the Financial Times. The researchers found that “employees working for companies run by a business school-educated manager earned, on average, 6 percent less in the US and 3 percent less in Denmark,” writes Spicer.