The real threat of AI isn't job loss — it's that your paycheck will stop growing.

A newly released white paper from Apollo Global Management makes a counterintuitive argument: AI may not directly take people’s jobs, but it could suppress wages first.

The study, which tracked wage and employment data across 321 occupations, found that since 2023—roughly coinciding with ChatGPT’s rapid rise in popularity—jobs with the highest AI exposure have seen average real wage growth fall by 6.7%. The researchers did not find a “detectable” impact from AI on overall employment, suggesting that the more immediate and widespread pressure today may not be job loss, but rather that pay raises are becoming harder to come by.

AI’s impact on wages is showing up before job losses

The white paper’s central conclusion is that, at this stage, AI’s disruption to the labor market is showing up more in pay than in headcount. In other words, many workers may still have their jobs, but their bargaining power and room for raises are quietly being eroded.

Lower-income workers are being hit harder

The research shows that wage pressure is not evenly distributed, with lower-income groups bearing the brunt of the impact.

• Since 2023, income growth for service-sector workers has fallen by an average of 24.3%;

• Workers in the bottom 25% of the income distribution have seen wages decline by 10.7%;

• The highest-earning group of workers has not experienced a “significant impact.”

The researchers also used Anthropic’s Economic Index to assess exposure levels based on the share of tasks in each occupation that are actually completed using AI tools, allowing them to gauge the extent of AI’s influence across different jobs.

Even high-skill jobs like programmers haven’t been spared

Beyond lower-income roles, some traditionally high-skill occupations are also facing downward wage pressure. Specifically:

• Real wages for computer programmers fell 6.1%;

• Statistical assistants saw a decline of 5.4%;

• Software quality analysts fell 2.9%;

• Database architects fell 2.7%.

The white paper estimates that about 5.8 million workers in the United States are employed in jobs with high AI exposure. As AI penetrates further into businesses, that number could continue to rise.

Not every highly exposed occupation is seeing pay declines

That said, AI’s impact on wages is not uniform. The study also found that in some occupations, pay has actually risen after AI entered the workflow.

• More than one-third of the tasks performed by personal financial advisors could be affected by AI, yet their wages rose 8.4%;

• About 30% of the work done by administrative law judges falls within AI’s sphere of influence, and their wages rose 17.5% over the same period.

This suggests that in some professions, AI may also generate positive wage effects by boosting productivity and increasing the value of work.

The real risk is: “You still have a job, but it’s harder to get a raise”

Based on this study, the AI era is bringing a more subtle shift to the labor market: compared with jobs disappearing outright, the more concerning reality is that many roles still exist, but workers are losing leverage when it comes to securing higher pay.

For most occupations with high AI exposure, this change may be harder to detect than unemployment, yet more persistent in shaping income expectations. That may be the most realistic way AI is affecting the job market right now.