A new study led by an international research team shows how Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are reshaping the workforce. The research, published on 29 January 2025 in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, analyses over three million job postings on a global freelancing platform, making it the largest study of its kind.
The large-scale study finds that the impact of Generative AI on the labour market is complex – creating opportunities in some areas while reducing demand in others.
Key insights:
Reduction of demand in some areas
In some areas of work (such as highly repetitive writing tasks, for example), ChatGPT leads to an effective reduction of labour demand, relative to the overall labour market trend. Jobs involving skills that can be partly substituted, such as writing and translating, have seen demand drop by 20 to 50 per cent, as tools take over these tasks.
New opportunities for freelancers
Generative AI is driving demand for skills that complement Generative AI technologies. This can partially be attributed to the hype around artificial intelligence, which creates new AI-related products and services that require specialists in chatbot development or machine learning. The demand for chatbot and natural language processing jobs has almost tripled since the launch of ChatGPT.
Experience matters
For skills that are substitutable by ChatGPT, such as writing and translation work, the largest reduction in demand was for experienced workers. For complementary skills like coding there was a reduction in demand for novice workers as companies sought out professionals with greater experience.
Generative AI is not destroying freelance jobs
ChatGPT is not the big job killer many fear; instead, the net demand for freelancing jobs has increased after the launch of ChatGPT. Generative AI is the latest trend in the long digital transformation process of the economy that started with the rise of computers and the internet.
– Generative AI is accelerating the transformation of the job market; a process that started decades ago with the introduction of computers to the workplace. It is the latest development of that digitalisation process: whilst the demand for partly substitutable skills such as writing and translating has reduced, we also see new jobs being created, such as roles creating chatbots or other machine learning related jobs, says Dr Fabian Braesemann from the Oxford Internet Institute.
“It seems that the use of AI, and thus its labour market impact, is still relatively limited so far,” says Dr. Otto Kässi, Etla researcher involved in the project.
– More generally, our results underline the fact that the labour market effects of even potentially revolutionary technological upheavals are often slow to materialise. Although GenAI tools can already at least speed up a reasonably large part of computing work, it seems that the use of AI, and thus its labour market impact, is still relatively limited so far,” says Dr. Otto Kässi, Etla researcher involved in the project.
The study comprises a team of international researchers and industry experts exploring the impact of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT on the job market. The co-authors of this new study are Ole Teutloff and Johanna Einsiedler, from the Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science, Dr Otto Kässi, from the ETLA Economic Research, Dr Fabian Braesemann, from the Oxford Internet Institute, Pamela Mishkin, and Assistant Professor R. Maria del Rio-Chanona, University College London and Complexity Science Hub Vienna.
About the research
The research was based on a large-scale data analysis of job postings from a leading online freelance platform using software analysis tool BERTopic and others during January 2021 and September 2023, covering around one year of data before and after the introduction of ChatGPT.
Source: Winners and losers of generative AI in the freelance job market – Etla participated in an
