What 81,000 people told us about the economics of AI
Figure 1: Perceived job threat from AI and Observed Exposure. Percentage of respondents indicating some job threat from AI vs. the Observed Exposure measure from Massenkoff and McCrory (2026). A respondent was coded as indicating job threat if they said their role was already being replaced or substantially reduced, or that such changes were likely in the near term (coded using Claude). The green line shows a simple linear fit.
Figure 2: Concern about economic displacement by career stage. Percentage of respondents indicating some job threat from AI, by career stage. Both fields are inferred from free-form responses using Claude-powered classifiers.
Figure 3: Inferred productivity gain by occupation. The left panel shows the mean inferred productivity benefit from AI (inferred using a Claude-powered classifier) by quartile of occupational median wage from the BLS. The right panel shows the same outcome, split by major occupational group. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 4: Where does the surplus from AI productivity go? Among respondents who named a beneficiary of their AI productivity gains, the share identifying each destination.
Figure 5: What kind of productivity gain do users report? Share of respondents describing each type of productivity benefit.
Figure 6: Job threat from AI and speedup. Percentage of respondents who said that displacement at their own job was already happening or likely in the near term, by the level of inferred speedup.
