What official US data says about AI and jobs going into fall 2026

Several strands of official US research published this year point in a consistent direction. Here is the short version, with sources.

Adoption is real and growing. The Federal Reserve Board’s monitoring note (April 2026) reports work-related generative-AI use by individuals at about 41 percent as of November 2025, and estimates from a survey of senior business leaders that 78 percent of the labor force works at firms that have adopted AI in some form.

Adoption is broad but shallow. St. Louis Fed research (September 2026) finds AI reaching most occupations while exceeding 70 percent of workers in only a small, computer-oriented minority of them.

Measured job effects remain limited so far. A Federal Reserve Board staff note (March 2026) finds no evidence of reduced job postings in industries or firms with higher AI adoption; New York Fed surveys (September 2026) find firms reshaping work rather than cutting jobs, with a minority of service firms hiring more because of AI.

None of this guarantees anything about a particular job. It does mean that, in the official data available today, task change is running well ahead of job elimination — which makes learning to work with and verify these tools a reasonable default strategy.