A new white paper released by Apollo Global Management presents an counterintuitive conclusion: AI may not directly take people's jobs, but it could first depress wages. A study tracking wage and employment data across 321 occupations shows that since 2023—roughly coinciding with the rapid rise of ChatGPT—the average wage growth for jobs with the highest AI exposure fell by 6.7%.

The research has not yet found a "detectable" impact of AI on overall employment, meaning that more people are currently facing the reality of difficulty in getting raises rather than anxiety about unemployment.

Low-income groups are hit first, and programmers are also not immune

The distribution of wage impacts is highly uneven. Since 2023, the income growth of service workers has averaged a decline of 24.3%, and the income of those in the bottom 25% dropped by 10.7%, while the highest-income group experienced no "significant impact." Researchers also used the Anthropic Economic Index to assess exposure levels, based on the proportion of job tasks actually completed using AI tools.

Looking at specific occupations, computer programmers saw a real wage decline of 6.1%, statistical assistants of 5.4%, software quality analysts of 2.9%, and database architects of 2.7%—these traditionally high-skill positions have also not escaped the downward pressure on wages brought by AI. The white paper estimates that about 5.8 million workers in the U.S. are employed in jobs with high AI exposure, and this number is likely to rise sharply as AI accelerates its penetration into the business world.

Certainly, there is another side to the coin. Personal financial advisors may have over one-third of their tasks affected by AI, yet their wages increased by 8.4%; administrative law judges have about 30% of their tasks within the reach of AI, and their wages rose by 17.5% during the same period. This suggests that the impact of AI on wages is not uniform; some professions have actually seen increased output value due to AI assistance. However, for most high-exposure jobs, AI brings not the fear of job loss, but a more subtle erosion—you still have a job, but the leverage for a raise is quietly shrinking. This might be the most realistic narrative unfolding in the labor market in the AI era.