AI, a job killer? This report debunks the notion, but highlights a worrying phenomenon.

Major disasters have this peculiarity: they rarely happen as expected. The OECD’s Employment Outlook 2026, published on July 7, takes stock of the labour markets of the 38 member countries in the first quarter of 2026. The findings are more nuanced than the pervasive narrative of AI eliminating jobs en masse.The employment rate in the OECD area reached 72.1%, while the activity rate reached 76.7%, both setting records or coming close to their historic highs.

72% employment, 4.9% unemployment: the figures sink the doomsday prophets

Labor markets in OECD countries continued to hold up in 2025 and early 2026. The most alarmist forecasts predicted a wave of outright job losses driven by automation. Those forecasts did not materialize. The average unemployment rate remained stable at 4.9% in May 2026. Two-thirds of member countries did record a slight increase, but it remained marginal. AI is reshaping labor markets locally (some regions are losing manufacturing jobs, while others are creating service-sector jobs), without triggering the broad rupture that some predicted.

Surveys conducted by the OECD in recent years among workers in the manufacturing and financial sectors of seven countries have yielded almost counter-intuitive findings. Four in five workers say that AI has improved their performance. Three in five say that it has increased their enjoyment of work (wording the OECD embraces with some aplomb, given the subject). Businesses’ adoption of AI nevertheless remains low on average, tempering both fears and hopes alike.

But your degree protects you less well than it used to, and the OECD is not quite sure why

The most delicate issue in the 2026 report concerns young university graduates.The OECD has identified a trend that has intensified over the past several years: they are increasingly exposed to unemployment compared with other workers. This finding aligns with the conclusions of OpenAI’s study focusing on the Old Continent. What makes the finding more troubling is the precision that the institution takes care to add. This trend began well before the rise of generative AI: “the underlying causes are more complex”, in its own words.

In other words, the OECD is observing a phenomenon without knowing precisely what drives it. Is it the devaluation of generalist qualifications in the face of markets demanding increasingly specific skills? A scissors effect between the growing supply of young graduates and entry-level positions that AI is helping to make scarcer? The report does not settle the question. It also notes that one-third of OECD countries have real wages below their level five years ago. And that geographic disparities within countries (not just between them) are widening inequalities in access to quality jobs.

For its part, the Banque de France measured in late May a clear lag among French companies compared with the euro area in AI adoption. The OECD’s economic report on France, published on 30 June, indeed called for acceleration. This further delays the actual impact on the local labour market.The question is therefore not whether AI is killing jobs, but which ones, at what pace, and for whom first.

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Source: https://www.oecd.org/fr/topics/sub-issues/ai-and-work.html