[US] New payroll data shows Gen Z women losing job market ground to men (and AI is not to blame!)

In the US, new research has revealed that young women are falling behind young men in the entry-level job market. But, perhaps surprisingly, AI is not to blame, Fortune reports.

The data, shared exclusively with Fortune, is from an update to the “Canaries Dashboard,” a joint project of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and ADP Research.

The research - led by Erik Brynjolfsson and Nela Richardson - documents how generative AI is reshaping entry-level hiring. 

The dashboard has reportedly uncovered a distinct and alarming pattern since its launch: finding that workers age 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations, such as software development and customer service, have seen declining employment growth since ChatGPT’s late-2022 debut, despite overall US employment growth remaining healthy. 

Researchers found that this divergence has steadily deepened, growing by approximately half a percentage point per month since their original paper in 2025.

In the latest update, seen by Fortune, the numbers are broken down by gender for the first time. Young women in the Canaries sample do show weaker employment growth than young men in the same 22-to-25 age bracket. 

Two forces were reportedly shown working in tandem: women are more likely to work in AI-exposed occupations to begin with, and, separately, they see somewhat slower employment growth than men at every level of AI exposure.

The majority of that gap originates with that occupational mix: 43.8 per cent of women work in the most-exposed category of jobs and 21.2 per cent in the second-most-exposed, compared with 32.4 per cent and 18.1 per cent of men.

However, according to the researchers, when they isolated how much of the growth gap tracked specifically with AI exposure, there was no connection. Women’s slower growth reportedly appears in low-exposure jobs almost as much as in high-exposure ones. In the least-exposed quintile, employment among 22-to-25-year-old women increased by just 1.3 per cent a year after late 2022, compared with 2.7 per cent for men.

That gap was nearly as great as that of the most-exposed category, where women’s employment shrank 4.5 per cent a year, compared with 2.5 per cent for men.

In statements shared with Fortune, the researchers wrote, “These gaps are a feature of our broader sample; they are not noticeably correlated with AI exposure.”

They reportedly concluded, “Gender-based differences in the relationship between AI exposure and employment trends appear to be driven primarily by occupational composition, rather than disparate trends within given sets of occupations.

Source: Fortune

(Quotes via original reporting)

In the US, new research has revealed that young women are falling behind young men in the entry-level job market. But, perhaps surprisingly, AI is not to blame, Fortune reports.

The data, shared exclusively with Fortune, is from an update to the “Canaries Dashboard,” a joint project of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and ADP Research.

The research - led by Erik Brynjolfsson and Nela Richardson - documents how generative AI is reshaping entry-level hiring. 

The dashboard has reportedly uncovered a distinct and alarming pattern since its launch: finding that workers age 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations, such as software development and customer service, have seen declining employment growth since ChatGPT’s late-2022 debut, despite overall US employment growth remaining healthy. 

Researchers found that this divergence has steadily deepened, growing by approximately half a percentage point per month since their original paper in 2025.

In the latest update, seen by Fortune, the numbers are broken down by gender for the first time. Young women in the Canaries sample do show weaker employment growth than young men in the same 22-to-25 age bracket. 

Two forces were reportedly shown working in tandem: women are more likely to work in AI-exposed occupations to begin with, and, separately, they see somewhat slower employment growth than men at every level of AI exposure.

The majority of that gap originates with that occupational mix: 43.8 per cent of women work in the most-exposed category of jobs and 21.2 per cent in the second-most-exposed, compared with 32.4 per cent and 18.1 per cent of men.

However, according to the researchers, when they isolated how much of the growth gap tracked specifically with AI exposure, there was no connection. Women’s slower growth reportedly appears in low-exposure jobs almost as much as in high-exposure ones. In the least-exposed quintile, employment among 22-to-25-year-old women increased by just 1.3 per cent a year after late 2022, compared with 2.7 per cent for men.

That gap was nearly as great as that of the most-exposed category, where women’s employment shrank 4.5 per cent a year, compared with 2.5 per cent for men.

In statements shared with Fortune, the researchers wrote, “These gaps are a feature of our broader sample; they are not noticeably correlated with AI exposure.”

They reportedly concluded, “Gender-based differences in the relationship between AI exposure and employment trends appear to be driven primarily by occupational composition, rather than disparate trends within given sets of occupations.

Source: Fortune

(Quotes via original reporting)