Executives reporting no AI impact on their own firm

Share of executives in a four-country survey (US, UK, Germany, Australia; more than 5,000 respondents) reporting no measurable AI impact on their firm's employment or productivity over the last three years, from Yotzov, Barrero and co-authors (NBER WP 34836).

Why it matters. Adoption headlines are broad, but firm-level impact is what adaptation means. Nine in ten firms seeing nothing yet is the productivity J-curve in survey form.

Proxy types

deployment, welfare

Unit

share

Cadence

annual

Valve

adoption to adaptation

• series nber.executives_4_countries.no_ai_impact_share.pt
• series peoplematters.executives_4_countries.no_ai_employment_impact_share.pt
• source NBER working papers and chapters · default tier 6 · NBER; abstract quotation
• source People Matters · default tier 5 · People Matters; short quotation

The survey says what the productivity statistics say. Impact is expected, reported and rarely measured.

2 observations. Hollow points are disputed (see counterevidence). Every point links to its observation.

Evaluator: 0.9 (NBER working papers and chapters, 2026-02-28) is inside the consistent band (lo=0.7 ). Auto-reason; band rationale: Normal = at least 70% of firms report no measurable impact three years in, as with PCs at the same age; fast = a majority reporting impact (no-impact share under 40%). Between is `emerging`.

• 2026-02-28 executives_4_countries · 90.0%as of 2026-02-28

1. 2026-09-10○unmeasured →to ●consistent with normalconf — → 70 · evaluate

   Evaluator: 0.9 (NBER working papers and chapters, 2026-02-28) is inside the consistent band (lo=0.7 ). Auto-reason; band rationale: Normal = at least 70% of firms report no measurable impact three years in, as with PCs at the same age; fast = a majority reporting impact (no-impact share under 40%). Between is `emerging`.

   obs:d0538040

70 / 95 — good evidence, some ambiguity

Confidence is independent of status: 90–95 multiple strong independent sources; 70–89 good evidence, some ambiguity; 50–69 mixed or hard to operationalise; below 50 limited or vague.

• Customer-support productivity uplift from a generative-AI assistant ●consistent with normal
• US labour productivity, year on year ●consistent with normal
• Enterprise pilots with measurable P&L impact ●consistent with normal