Interestingly, the authors do at least acknowledge the alternative hypotheses that we wonder about (including this thread) in studies like this:

> Some observers have also linked AI to recent labor market trends: since late 2022, unemployment among recent college graduates has risen sharply, even as the unemploy-ment rate for young workers overall has remained steady (Appendix Figure A.1). Others, however, question the importance of AI in these developments, pointing to alternative factors such as economic uncertainty, post-Covid retrenchment, and increased offshoring (e.g., Financial Times, 2025).

(No mention of ZIRP. Also, they used LLMs to classify data, so there's that.)

I only had a quick look, and IANAE, but while the study does not discuss these factors any further, their methodology may implicitly account for them. Briefly, the study looks at employment of junior employees vs senior employees over the last 2 years across a bunch of companies that it categorizes as AI adopters vs non-adopters (based on an admittedly very narrow definition of "adoption".)

It finds that starting in 2023 Q1, the hiring of juniors dropped sharply while that of seniors kept growing in firms that adopted AI compared to non-adopters. Given this approach, maybe those confounding factors cancel out? Like, why would economic uncertainty, offshoring, ZIRP or whatever impact only firms adopting AI and not others within the same sector?

Some other interesting findings:

- Juniors who do get hired, get promoted more quickly, likely due to lower competition. Could be yet another mechanism that increases the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

- The biggest effects are in the wholesale / retail trade sector, which is surprising because offhand, I would not have thought this sector to be much impacted by AI.

I follow some labor economists and these findings align a lot with what they've been saying about the job reports over the years.

Another very interesting finding is that graduates of mid-tier colleges are impacted the most, whereas elite and "less selective" institutions are least affected. Something to consider when evaluating the ROI of tuition for a given college...