人工智能是否已经让毕业生失业了？
Is AI putting graduates out of work already?
文本难度：四级
刘立军供稿
If you are studying coding, we might have some bad news.
如果你正在学习编程，我们可能得告诉你一个坏消息。
“There’s no sign in the data that AI is costing anybody their job right now,” Kevin Hassett, a White House adviser, said on May 11th. Someone should tell America’s class of 2026. “It’s grim,” one professor says of the market for graduate jobs. Artificial intelligence is the popular villain. At a recent commencement ceremony in Florida a speaker was booed for mentioning it. And not without reason: our analysis suggests AI may indeed be harming some graduates’ job prospects.
“目前没有任何数据表明人工智能正在导致任何人失业，”白宫顾问凯文·哈塞特（Kevin Hassett）5月11日表示。可这话恐怕得去告诉2026届的美国毕业生们。一位教授在谈及毕业生就业市场时直言：“形势很严峻。”人工智能成了众矢之的。最近在佛罗里达州的一场毕业典礼上，有演讲者一提到AI，就被台下的学生喝倒彩。而这种愤怒并非毫无道理：我们的分析表明，AI确实可能正在损害部分毕业生的就业前景。
A university degree no longer seems to offer much protection from joblessness: recent graduates are likelier to be unemployed than the average American. The current cohort feels particularly gloomy. Less than a fifth of them think this is a good time to find a good job – the lowest share in over a decade, and well below the figure for Americans overall, at more than a quarter. A slump in on-campus recruiting is not helping. Job postings on Handshake, a search platform for university students, are 50% below their peak of 2022.
大学学位似乎不再能有效抵御失业风险：应届毕业生的失业率甚至比美国人的平均水平还要高。本届毕业生感到尤其悲观。他们中不足五分之一的人认为眼下是找到好工作的良机——这一比例创下十多年来的新低，也远低于美国整体超过四分之一的比例。校园招聘的低迷更是雪上加霜。在面向大学生的求职平台 Handshake 上，职位发布量比2022年的峰值暴跌了50%。
Many suspect AI is to blame. More than half of employers say they have considered replacing entry-level workers with the technology. A recent poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School found that, similarly, more than half of young Americans see AI as a threat to their job prospects.
许多人怀疑罪魁祸首正是人工智能。超过半数的雇主表示，他们考虑用AI技术来取代初级岗位员工。哈佛大学肯尼迪学院政治研究所近期的一项民调也显示：超过半数的美国年轻人认为AI对他们的就业前景构成了威胁。
Economists are more divided. A paper by Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University and colleagues, published in 2025, examined employment among young workers in AI-exposed jobs, such as software development. The authors found it had fallen by 16% relative to less-exposed fields.
经济学家们则对此意见不一。斯坦福大学的埃里克·布林约尔松（Erik Brynjolfsson）及其同事在2025年发表的一篇论文中，研究了软件开发等易受AI影响岗位的年轻工作者的就业情况。作者发现，其就业率相比受AI影响较小的领域下降了16%。
But a paper published this year by Zanna Iscenko and Fabien Curto Millet, two economists at Google, casts doubt on the idea that young workers in particular are being displaced by AI. They found that job postings in AI-exposed occupations have declined just as sharply for senior workers as for junior ones, and that this trend predated the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. Another study, by Morgan Frank of the University of Pittsburgh and colleagues, showed that labor-market outcomes have deteriorated for AI-exposed employees, but that this trend also began before ChatGPT was released.
不过，今年由谷歌的两位经济学家赞娜·伊森科（Zanna Iscenko）和法比安·库尔托·米莱（Fabien Curto Millet）发表的一篇论文，对“年轻员工尤其容易被AI取代”的观点提出了质疑。他们发现，在易受AI影响的岗位中，针对资深员工的岗位招聘数量下降幅度与初级员工一样剧烈，且这一趋势在2022年底 ChatGPT 推出之前就已经出现。匹兹堡大学的摩根·弗兰克（Morgan Frank）及其同事的另一项研究也表明，虽然易受AI影响的劳动者就业状况确实恶化了，但这种趋势同样始于 ChatGPT 发布之前。
The Economist has conducted its own analysis, using a largely overlooked source of data: ten years’ worth of surveys of recent college graduates from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Each year American universities ask new alumni whether they are working, unemployed or in graduate school. Using their responses, we compared labor-market outcomes in fields with differing levels of exposure to AI before and after the arrival of large language models.
《经济学人》也开展了独立分析，采用的是长期被忽视的数据来源：美国高校与雇主协会（NACE）过去十年对应届大学毕业生的调查。每年，美国各高校都会询问新近校友是否已就业、失业，或正在攻读研究生。利用这些反馈，我们对比了在大语言模型出现前后，受AI影响程度不同的领域在就业市场中的表现。
We found that graduates in fields more exposed to AI have suffered markedly worse outcomes. Between 2022 and 2024 graduates in the least-exposed quintile – studying subjects such as education, philosophy and civil engineering – saw their average full-time employment rate fall by just 1.5 percentage points. Those in the most exposed quintile – including computer science, computer engineering and information science – suffered a 6.6 percentage-point drop.
我们发现，受AI影响较大的专业，其毕业生的就业状况明显更差。在2022年至2024年间，受AI影响最小的20%的专业（如教育学、哲学和土木工程）毕业生，其平均全职就业率仅下降了1.5个百分点。而受AI影响最大的20%的专业（包括计算机科学、计算机工程和信息科学），则遭受了6.6个百分点的降幅。
We updated these figures for the most exposed fields, using data from 13 universities, and found that the trend continued for the class of 2025. The rate of full-time employment fell from nearly 70% to 55% in three years – notably, the three years following ChatGPT’s release in 2022. Prior to that, it had been stable.
我们采用13所大学的数据，对受AI影响最大领域的就业数据进行了更新，发现2025届毕业生也延续了这一趋势。三年间，全职就业率从近70%下降到了55%——值得注意的是这是2022年 ChatGPT 发布之后的三年。而在那之前，该比率一直保持平稳。
Students are already changing course. Data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a research group, show that undergraduate enrolment in computer science fell by 11% in 2025. Enrolment in computer programming, which focuses on coding skills rather than theory, dropped by 26%.
学生们已经开始“用脚投票”。研究机构“国家学生信息中心”的数据显示，2025年计算机科学专业的本科生入学人数下降了11%，而侧重于编码技能而非理论的计算机编程专业，入学人数更是大幅下滑了26%。
The work done by computer-science graduates is changing, too. Less time is spent writing code; more is devoted to designing and organizing software systems at a higher level. Lana Yarosh, director of undergraduate studies in computer science at the University of Minnesota, says she understands students’ anxieties. “It’s always hard when things change. But computer science is a field where everything changes all the time.”
计算机科学专业的毕业生所从事的工作内容也在发生变化：写代码的时间变少了，更多精力被投入到更高层面的软件系统设计和架构组织之中。明尼苏达大学计算机科学本科项目主任拉娜·亚罗什（Lana Yarosh）表示，她理解学生们的焦虑：“当情况发生变化时，总是很难适应。但计算机科学本身就是一个日新月异的领域。”
【词汇】
1. grim adj. 严峻的；惨淡的
2. villain n. 罪魁祸首；反面人物
3. boo v. 发嘘声；喝倒彩
4. cohort n. 群体；一批人
5. slump n. 急剧下滑；暴跌
6. displace v. 取代；使流离失所
7. predate v. 先于……发生；早于
8. alumni n. 校友（alumnus的复数）
9. quintile n. 五分之一组，即以数据的20%为一组
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