AI is a wash on paper, not for your job search

A recent piece of economic research looked at AI's effect on employment and found something that cuts against both the doom headlines and the breezy reassurance: at an aggregate level, the job gains and job losses from AI are roughly cancelling each other out. The total number of jobs looks fairly stable. But that overall figure hides a lot of churn underneath — some roles and tasks are genuinely shrinking, others are growing, and the 'average' tells you almost nothing about what's happening to any one person.

Why the average is misleading

If you're job hunting, you don't experience 'the economy' — you experience your sector, your role, your region. A net-neutral national picture can still mean your specific job function is being quietly phased out, while a different one you've never considered is hiring steadily. Headlines about AI 'not destroying jobs overall' can lull people into thinking there's nothing to think about. There is — it's just not evenly spread.

What this means for your job search

• Don't take comfort or alarm from national-level stats — check what's actually happening in your specific field and job titles you're targeting.
• Look at live job ads for your role, not just commentary: are the listed tasks changing, shrinking, or multiplying?
• Be open to adjacent roles. If a task you used to do is now partly automated, the human part of that job hasn't vanished — it's often moved sideways into oversight, judgement calls, or client-facing work.
• Keep your CV focused on outcomes and judgement, not just the mechanical steps of a process — those are the parts least likely to be replaced and most likely to be valued.

What to actually do about it

Don't try to out-guess the labour market years in advance — nobody can do that reliably, including the researchers. Instead, do something more useful: audit your own current CV against the roles actually being advertised right now in your field. If the skills being asked for have shifted, even slightly, update how you describe your experience to reflect that. This is a far better use of your time than reading macro trend pieces and trying to divine your personal risk from them.

The net number of jobs can stay flat while individual careers are reshaped underneath it.

The honest takeaway is that uncertainty is the real constant here — not collapse, not immunity. Staying employable is less about predicting the future and more about staying responsive to what employers are asking for today.

FixMyCV tailors your CV to the specific role you're applying for, so it reflects what employers are actually hiring for now — without ever inventing experience you don't have.

Source: CEPR. FixMyCV summarises and comments; we never reproduce articles.