Anthropic · Dario Amodei · Goldman Sachs · Fortune Technology
AI could displace one in 11 workers, Goldman says, but the layoffs are likely waiting for a recession
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The AI layoff panic that peaked this spring has gone quiet.
Key facts
- In August 2025, he and Goldman economist Sarah Dong estimated AI could displace 6% to 7% of the U.S. workforce if widely adopted, within a range of 3% to 14%
- Under the bank’s forecast that AI eventually lifts productivity by 15% in the U.S. and other developed economies, he found that up to 9% of workers could be “displaced during the AI transition
- The line drops in steps for the recessions of the early 1980s, 2001, 2008, and 2020, and it doesn’t climb back to where it
- Historically, each 1% gain in technology-driven productivity pushed the unemployment rate up 0.3 to 0.4 points at its peak, fading to zero after two years
Summary
“Concerns of imminent AI-related labor displacement have cooled in recent months after hitting a fever pitch this spring,” Goldman economist Joseph Briggs wrote in a note published Thursday. “AI-related labor disruptions could well amplify the broader business cycle,” he wrote. Goldman has now made this argument twice, a year apart, from two different teams. The chart that makes the case tracks the share of Americans in routine jobs: clerks, secretaries, factory machine operators, mechanics. Mericle and Mei pointed to the same pattern last year with the “jobless recovery” that followed the dotcom bust.