US Daily: Are College Students Adjusting to AI-Driven Labor Market Shifts?

Research evidence excerpt

US Daily: Are College Students Adjusting to AI-Driven Labor Market Shifts?

Goldman Sachs US Daily

Exhibit 2: For Each Major, We Estimate the Occupational Mix of Recent Graduates…

Percent Percent Employment Share of Top 5 Occupations

for College-Educated Full-Time Workers Aged 21-30, 30 30

by Selected Majors

20 20

10 10

0 0

Scientists Developers and Nurses Scientists Technicians Health Managers Administrators Analysts Scientists Lawyers Physicians Aides Managers Administrators Mathematicians Analysts Specialists and Registered Physical Clinical Computer Software Financial Computer Management Management

Computer Science Economics Biology

Note: The employment shares refer to 2024, the latest available year in the American Community Survey.

Source: Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research, Census Bureau

Second, we combine these occupational shares with the AI displacement risk scores

developed by our global economics team, which capture the likelihood of displacement

from AI automation across more than 300 occupations. For each major, we multiply each

occupation’s AI displacement risk score by its employment share among recent

graduates and sum across occupations to construct a major-level measure of the

AI-related displacement risk that graduates face upon entering the workforce.

Exhibit 3 shows the five most and least AI-exposed majors according to our measure.

Computer science and statistics majors face the highest displacement risk in their typical

destination occupations, while health and education majors face the lowest. The

Appendix reports a broader set of majors and their displacement risk scores: majors

that feed into professional and business services occupations also exhibit elevated

displacement risk, while engineering majors face relatively lower AI exposure.