Adaptation · Labour & consumers
Chatbot effect on earnings and hours in exposed occupations (Denmark)
1What this measures
Difference-in-differences estimate of the effect of chatbot adoption on earnings and recorded hours for workers in exposed occupations, two years after ChatGPT, from Humlum and Vestergaard's Danish register study; the point estimates centre on zero with confidence intervals excluding effects above 2%.
Why it matters. The cleanest labour-market null on record, from administrative data covering the whole population. A normal technology shows up in earnings slowly; this is the slow showing.
- Proxy types
- welfare
- Unit
- share
- Cadence
- annual
- Valve
- adoption to adaptation
2How we track this
- series
humlum_pdf.denmark_exposed_workers.chatbot_effect_on_earnings.pt - series
nber.denmark_exposed_workers.chatbot_effect_bound.pt - series
chicago_booth.denmark_exposed_workers.chatbot_effect_bound.pt - source Chicago Booth Center for Applied AI · default tier 6 · Chicago Booth; short quotation
- source Humlum working-paper PDFs (author site) · default tier 6 · Author preprint; short quotation
- source NBER working papers and chapters · default tier 6 · NBER; abstract quotation
- Normal band
- ≥ -2.0% and ≤ 2.0%
- Fast band
- ≤ -5.0%
- Falsifying
- —
Normal = earnings and hours effects within two percent two years in; fast = a decline of five percent or more for exposed workers. Between is `emerging`.
Applied to humlum_pdf.denmark_exposed_workers.chatbot_effect_on_earnings.pt.
3Tracker interpretation
Zero, precisely. Adoption is high, time savings are real and modest, and none of it reaches pay yet.
4Evidence
5Status and reasoning
Evaluator: 0 (Humlum working-paper PDFs (author site), 2024-12-31) is inside the consistent band (lo=-0.02 hi=0.02). Auto-reason; band rationale: Normal = earnings and hours effects within two percent two years in; fast = a decline of five percent or more for exposed workers. Between is `emerging`.
6Timeline notes
- 2024-12-31 denmark_exposed_workers · 0.0%as of 2024-12-31
7Counterevidence
What cuts against this reading
Denmark is not the US; the window ends in 2024, before agentic tools; the effect could be a compositional wash across winners and losers.
8Update history
- 2026-09-10unmeasured to consistent with normalconf — → 80 · evaluate
Evaluator: 0 (Humlum working-paper PDFs (author site), 2024-12-31) is inside the consistent band (lo=-0.02 hi=0.02). Auto-reason; band rationale: Normal = earnings and hours effects within two percent two years in; fast = a decline of five percent or more for exposed workers. Between is `emerging`.
9Confidence
80 / 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.
10Related
- Freelance writing earnings after ChatGPT (Upwork) consistent with normal
- Employment in AI-exposed occupations, year on year consistent with normal
- Crosswalk: Adaptation ⇄ Labour & consumers (same valve)