Gen Z will be hurt—and helped—the most by generative AI in these types of jobs

For years, discussion of how AI might replace tasks, the office, and even employees themselves has dominated the cultural zeitgeist. But until now, there hasn’t been much overarching data on how AI is actually changing the workforce.

On August 26, researchers at Stanford published what they’re calling the “largest scale, most real-time effort” to calculate that impact—and it includes some bad news for Gen Zers.

The study was conducted by Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, and Ruyu Chen, all researchers at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI. They used an administrative dataset from ADP, the largest payroll software provider in the U.S., to track monthly payroll records across tens of thousands of firms from late 2022 to July 2025.

That data was supplemented by a calculation of “o