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AI가 미국의 노동시장에 미치는 영향에 대한 연설입니다.

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How We Got Here: A Perspective on Inflation and the Labor Market

Governor Adriana D. Kugler

At the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts

On the eve of the pandemic, the labor market was quite strong. The unemployment rate was nearing historical lows, having fallen to 3.5 percent in the fall of 2019 from an average of 4.7 percent between 2014 and 2019. Jobs were relatively plentiful, with 12 openings for every 10 unemployed job seekers.

Then, the labor market changed dramatically in the first few months of the pandemic when economies around the world shut down. By April 2020, nearly one out of every seven workers was unemployed. The labor market lost more than 20 million jobs in just two months. To put that into perspective, that is nearly four times the total number of jobs in one of the larger U.S. states. Workers and employers, with the support of timely and extraordinary policy action, proved to be resilient and innovative. As we know from economic research, the pandemic recession was the shortest on record, even though it was the deepest since the Great Depression. By mid-2020, the economy was growing again.

And grow it did. The labor market rebounded, gaining 25 million jobs in the three years from its low point in April 2020. Demand for labor outpaced supply such that by mid-2022 there were 20 job openings for every 10 unemployed job seekers. By early 2023, the unemployment rate fell to 3.4 percent, its lowest level in 60 years.

In the last year and a half, labor demand has moderated, as restrictive monetary policy helped bring aggregate demand in line with supply and eased inflationary pressure. At the same time, labor supply grew rapidly, and now labor demand and supply are more balanced. While the overall labor market remains solid, it has cooled noticeably this year and is now less tight than it was on the eve of the pandemic. In August, the unemployment rate stood at 4.2 percent, having risen by almost a half percentage point over the past 12 months. And, in recent months, the number of job openings relative to unemployed job seekers has fallen to just below its pre-pandemic range.

As labor demand and supply are now more evenly balanced, it may become more difficult for some individuals to find employment. For example, younger workers could experience more hurdles as they look for that first job that will launch them on a longer career path. Over the past 12 months, the share of 16- to 24-year-olds in the labor force who are unemployed has risen over 1 percentage point, notably larger than the overall increase. Such data are consistent with recent reports indicating some recent graduates are facing unexpected difficulties finding suitable jobs. It is also the case that less-educated and minority workers could face greater hurdles, as they tend to benefit more from tighter labor markets and suffer more from weakening economic conditions.

The slowing of the solid labor market has come alongside a significant easing in inflationary pressure. Inflation was 2.5 percent over the 12 months ending in July, notably closer to the target rate of 2 percent than a year earlier—when inflation was 3.3 percent—and far below its peak of 7 percent in mid-2022. In recent months, the upside risks to inflation have diminished, and the downside risks to employment have increased. In response to these changing conditions, I fully supported the decision to lower policy interest rates by a half percentage point at a recent monetary policy meeting. This decision reflected growing confidence that, with an appropriate recalibration of the policy stance, the solid labor market can be maintained in a context of moderate economic growth and inflation continuing to move sustainably down to the target. In thinking about the path of policy moving forward, I will be looking carefully at incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.

The return to balance in the labor market between supply and demand, as well as the ongoing return toward the inflation target, reflects the normalization of the economy after the dislocations of the pandemic. This normalization, particularly of inflation, is quite welcome, as a balance between supply and demand is essential for sustaining a prolonged period of labor-market strength. Of course, there will always be new developments and changes that will reshape the labor market. Recent advances in AI technology are perhaps the most talked about and debated of such developments today. I anticipate that these advances may have a significant effect on workers, the labor market, and the economy in coming years.

From the outset, I, like most of my economist colleagues studying the economics of innovation and AI closely, acknowledge that the implications of AI are highly uncertain. We still do not know what the ultimate magnitude or intensity of this effect will be, which workers and firms will be most affected, or even the time period over which these effects will be realized. But today, I will highlight how economic theory and some recent studies can shed initial light on these critical questions.

The key reason why many expect AI will have a substantial effect on the economy is because AI has the potential to provide a large and sustained boost to labor-productivity growth—which is simply how much output of an individual worker grows over time. Ultimately, growth in output per person, workers' real earnings, and households' real purchasing power can all be tied back to growth in labor productivity. Like many of the most significant technological innovations of the past 200 or so years—such as the steam engine, electricity, computers, and the internet—AI has the potential to affect labor productivity in a plethora of economic activities across many industries and occupations.

For instance, over the past few years we have seen dramatic advances in generative AI technologies, which synthesize massive quantities of data to create models that can produce high-quality text, images, and video. Building upon these recent advances, a wide variety of new AI assistants have been deployed to help workers in a broad range of jobs. Although the degree to which these new assistants will improve labor productivity is likely to be quite idiosyncratic, some early studies suggest the effects could be large. One recent study examined the effect of an AI assistant for customer support agents and found that agents using the AI assistant resolved 14 percent more customer issues per hour—with this improvement being most pronounced for workers with comparatively less experience and less formal training.

But perhaps even more promising is AI's potential for improving our ability to generate new ideas. AI is being used in drug discovery to identify novel chemical compounds; in energy research to extend the duration of a fusion reaction; and in engineering to better understand the aerodynamics of automobiles, airplanes, and ships. If AI can improve our ability to generate new ideas, then it could provide a long-term boost to labor productivity growth, as each newly discovered idea will itself provide an incremental boost to labor productivity.