Comment on "Artificial Intelligence and Technological Unemployment" by Wang and Wong

This comment, written by J. Carter Braxton (University of Wisconsin), discusses the paper “Artificial Intelligence and Technological Unemployment” by Wang and Wong (2025), which develops and quantifies an equilibrium labor search model to evaluate the employment effects of spreading AI. Wang and Wong’s central finding is that improvements in AI quality will increase productivity by a factor of three while reducing employment by 23%, with approximately half of the employment decline occurring within the next five years. Braxton’s comment serves two purposes: first, to clarify the model’s structural channels through which AI affects employment; and second, to bring empirical evidence from the spread of computers in the 1980s–2000s to bear on the relative magnitude of those channels.

J. Carter Braxton | Macro Paper Warehouse

Comment on "Artificial Intelligence and Technological Unemployment" by Wang and Wong