A major talking point for those who think AI will cause mass unemployment is the recent slowdown in junior-level hiring. Lambert and Schindler, in …

A working paper by Lambert and Schindler analyzing ~250 million hires across four countries finds that AI exposure's apparent effect on junior hiring disappears when controlling for WFH policies, while WFH's effect remains significant. Practitioners citing AI as the cause of reduced entry-level hiring should account for this confound.