The Labor-Share Displacement Indicator

An annual reading of whether AI-exposed sectors are expanding profit margins by suppressing payroll relative to value added (the extraction signature) or sharing the gains with labor. Each AI-exposed sector is compared to a control of non-AI-exposed industries (the rest of the private economy), a difference-in-differences, so a broad AI effect cannot hide inside the aggregate. Built entirely from public BEA data, updated each September.

Current reading, through 2024: economy-wide quiet.

Against the non-exposed control, no AI-exposed sector sits at the signal threshold in 2024. Professional, scientific and technical services crossed it in 2023 (+2.3 standard deviations) and has faded to +0.7, a real but weakening signal. Information services reads negative: its AI talent bidding war is raising labor's share, not cutting it. Finance is quiet. Health care reads high (+2.1 in 2023) but that is the separate cost ratchet, not automation. The headline is "too early," and that is the point: the tax distortions that would bend AI toward replacing workers are measured and in place, but no broad displacement has arrived. This page is where it will show up first.