AI Job Boom Defies Market Decline as ChatGPT Reshapes Hiring
While overall U.S. job postings fell 17%, AI job listings surged by 68%, signaling a dramatic shift in hiring priorities. A University of Maryland study reveals how the "ChatGPT effect" is accelerating AI adoption across industries, reshaping the labor market at an unprecedented pace.
Since ChatGPT's late-2022 launch, AI job postings in the United States "have ramped up dramatically, from 29,509 in Q4 2022 to 49,577 in Q4 2024, an uptick of 68 percent," according to new analysis at UMD-LinkUp AI Maps, the world's first tool for mapping the creation of jobs requiring artificial intelligence skills and co-produced by researchers at the University of Maryland's Robert H. School of Business.
Sector-Level Analysis
The findings are the subject of the white paper (PDF) "Diffusion of AI Jobs Across Economic Sectors." In the same period, all U.S. job postings declined by 17 percent overall. "While this decline does not suggest that companies are employing fewer people, it does suggest that companies are hiring new staff at a slower pace," write the researchers. Our data are consistent with a broader softening in the labor market, they add.
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
On the key measure of AI Jobs Intensity, three sectors stand out: "information" (at 3.24 percent), "professional, scientific, and technical services" (at 2.40 percent), and "finance and insurance" (at 1.54 percent). The AI Jobs Intensity for the U.S. economy as a whole is 0.72 percent.
Gupta explains: "the reason is very clear: in these three sectors, all work is knowledge work, and thus amenable to augmentation or substitution by AI." The contrast between the two sectors at the other extreme is stark. Together, "health care and social assistance" and "accommodation and food services" account for 28 percent of all job postings but only 1.5 percent of AI job postings.
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
The latest findings show "dramatic growth" in the AI job-postings share of the "professional, scientific, and technical services" sector in the overall U.S. economy – from 13.5 percent in 2018-Q1 to 24.0 percent in 2024-Q4. Gupta explains: "While practically all sectors of the economy have embraced AI, it appears that many companies in the historically less digitized sectors have chosen to outsource their AI expertise to consulting firms."
Finance and Insurance
Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022-Q4, AI postings increased sharply by 62 percent versus a very sharp 33 percent decline in IT postings.
As in the other sectors, here as well, there is strong evidence that companies are investing in AI jobs at the expense of more general IT jobs. In terms of AI Jobs Intensity, the three main subsectors – "insurance carriers," "commercial banking," and "investment banking" – are quite similar.
Manufacturing
Within the vast and diverse "manufacturing" sector, the "computer and electronic products" subsector vastly outshines the other manufacturing subsectors. This subsector accounts for 46 percent of AI job postings in the sector, even though its share of all job postings is only 15 percent.
Retail
Unlike the "information" sector, "retail" employs vast numbers of people who mostly do physical work in brick-and-mortar outlets and fulfillment centers for purely online retailers, like Amazon's retail business.
