The problem
What needs solving
Find out whether AI is shrinking young people’s way into work, and whether any effect is a delay or a lasting break. The answer must come fast enough to act on, from how employers actually use AI rather than which jobs it could do.
Why it matters
Stanford’s US payroll data show employment of 22- to 25-year-olds in the jobs most open to AI about 19% lower than if it had grown like other jobs (August 2026). The authors call it a pattern, not proof. Studies that can tell which employers push or adopt AI disagree. Danish records to the end of 2024 show no difference in the share of early-career staff at workplaces that encourage chatbots. A Harvard study of US résumés finds about 9% fewer junior staff at firms that began hiring for generative-AI roles. We found no official statistic that links employers’ AI use to who they hire.
What counts as progress
(a) A statistics office publishes, within 90 days of each quarter, hiring of 22- to 25-year-olds by occupation and by employers’ reported AI use, for the US and one other large economy. (b) Two teams using different official records, with plans published in advance, estimate how much of the change in young people’s hiring is due to AI, with overlapping margins of error under 10 points wide. (c) Solved when five years of official records follow people who started work in 2023–25, and a rule set in advance shows whether their hiring and pay gaps at AI-using employers closed or stayed open.
Stater & version history
Stated by UNSOLVED editors
18 Oct 2026 — Stated by the UNSOLVED editors for the founding registry, from the research of October 2026.