Brookings / Danish data (Humlum & Vestergaard): chatbot adoption had no measurable effect on earnings or hours through 2024
On Oct 6, 2026 Brookings published a study by economists Anders Humlum (University of Chicago) and Emilie Vestergaard (University of Copenhagen) linking a survey of 25,000 Danish workers in 11 AI-exposed occupations to administrative records through December 2024. It found precise null effects of chatbot adoption on earnings and hours (effects above 2% ruled out) and no faster decline of early-career workers at AI-adopting workplaces, but more occupation switching among adopters.
Key facts
- Data: survey of 25,000 workers in 11 AI-exposed occupations (software developers, IT support, customer support, office clerks, accountants, financial advisors, HR, legal, marketing, journalists, teachers), linked to Danish registers through Dec 2024
- Earnings and hours: precise nulls for both adopting workers and adopting workplaces; confidence intervals rule out effects larger than 2%; 98% of adopters say AI has not affected their earnings
- Young workers: entry-level jobs fell in AI-exposed occupations, but 'the share of early-career workers has evolved no differently at workplaces that encourage chatbot use'
- Exception: adopters switched occupations more often, into better-paid roles where the tools applied, with earnings growth 12 percentage points ahead of other workers
- Authors' reading: 'Our data open a window into the trough of the productivity J-curve, where work is being reorganized before anything registers in hours or earnings'
- Caveat: data end in December 2024, before the 2025–2026 agent and frontier-model wave
What happened
The two economists, whose earlier work found "small labor market effects" of LLMs in Denmark, extended it with linked survey and register data. Brookings published the results as part of its labor-market series.
Why it matters
It is some of the best microdata on generative AI and jobs, and it finds little effect on pay and hours through 2024. That contrasts with 2026 reports of firms cutting jobs because of AI, a gap explained partly by the data ending before the agent era.
Changelog
- 2026-10-07: created
Sources (1)
id: 2026-10-06-humlum-vestergaard-brookings-ai-labor-null-effects · updated 2026-10-07 · open in the interactive timeline