How Economic Policy Trapped Workers in Impossible Choices
Corruption Economy Wages Workers

How Economic Policy Trapped Workers in Impossible Choices

Vote Democrat 22 December 2025

For decades, the American Dream represented a simple bargain: work hard, play by the rules, and you’ll get ahead. In 2025, that foundational promise has fractured under the weight of four interconnected contradictions—each demanding workers make impossible choices where every option leads to blame and no path leads to security.

The numbers tell a devastating story. Only 25% of Americans now believe they have a good chance of improving their standard of living—a record low since polling began in 1987, according to a September 2025 Wall Street Journal-NORC survey.1 Nearly 70% say the American Dream either no longer holds true or never did, the highest level of skepticism in nearly 15 years of tracking.2

This isn’t partisan grievance or generational angst. The pessimism spans every demographic: men and women, young and old, college-educated and not, those earning above $100,000 and those struggling on far less. For Americans aged 18-29 specifically, belief in the American Dream plummeted from 56% in 2010 to just 21% in 2024.3

In a survey conducted by Zest AI in August 2025, 74% of Americans reported abandoning goals they once associated with the American Dream due to economic pressure.4 Meanwhile, Pew Research Center found that 41% of Americans believe the American Dream was once achievable but no longer is, with only 53% maintaining faith in its possibility.5

Americans aren’t irrationally pessimistic—they’re rationally responding to systemic contradictions that make upward mobility mathematically impossible for most workers. These contradictions aren’t accidents of economics. They’re features of an economic system redesigned over four decades to transfer wealth upward while demanding impossible choices from those left behind.

Contradiction One: The Spending Trap

The Demand: Americans must spend freely to fuel economic growth while simultaneously saving aggressively for emergencies and retirement.

The Reality: There’s no money left to navigate these competing imperatives.

The American economy depends on consumer spending like a patient depends on a beating heart. Personal consumption expenditures constituted 69.1% of U.S. GDP in the second quarter of 2025, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis—meaning more than two-thirds of all economic activity flows from ordinary people buying goods and services.6 This isn’t an accident of economics. It’s the design of the system.

Yet beneath aggregate spending figures lies a troubling bifurcation. According to Moody’s Analytics, the wealthiest 10% of American households—those earning at least $250,000 annually—drove half of all consumer spending between September 2023 and September 2024, totaling roughly $10 trillion.7 The top 20% of earners are responsible for 57% of overall consumption, per Dallas Federal Reserve research.8

This concentration reveals what economists have termed a “K-shaped economy,” where affluent households maintain robust consumption while the majority face mounting financial pressure. McKinsey’s first-quarter 2025 consumer sentiment survey found that three-quarters of consumers reported trading down on purchases, seeking cheaper alternatives and reducing quantities.9 Gen Z consumers felt this strain most acutely, with larger shares reporting cutting back on food spending, depleting savings, and increasing credit card usage compared to other age groups.10

Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, described the dynamic bluntly: “A silent majority of consumers is increasingly strained by a two-year affordability crisis and elevated borrowing costs.”11 The personal savings rate has declined from a spike of 5.7% in April 2025—coinciding with tariff policy announcements—to 4.6% by September, as consumers drew down buffers to offset rising costs.12

The accusations of fiscal irresponsibility ring hollow when examining household finances. Average household debt reached $105,056 in 2024, up 13% from 2020, according to Experian.13 Credit card debt alone hit $1.233 trillion in the third quarter of 2025, the highest on record, with average APRs exceeding 22%—the most expensive borrowing costs in modern history.14

Most critically, Americans spend 52% of their income on essentials like housing, food, and utilities, rising to 66% when debt payments are included, according to Clever Real Estate research.15 Bank of America data reveals that nearly 24% of households now live paycheck to paycheck—defined as spending over 95% of income on necessities—up from 23.7% in 2024.16 For lower-income households specifically, the figure climbed to 29% in 2025.17

The Deloitte Consumer Index found 73% of Americans expect higher grocery prices next month, up 16 points since the start of 2025.18 This creates profound economic vulnerability. When growth depends on the spending habits of the wealthiest 10-20% of households, any shock affecting high-income earners ripples through the entire economy—while the remaining 80% of workers see their spending barely keep pace with inflation.

Economists simultaneously call consumer spending both the engine of economic growth and evidence of American profligacy. Workers are condemned for not saving enough to weather emergencies while being blamed when reduced spending threatens economic stability.

There is no winning move. Save money and you’re hurting the economy. Spend money and you’re financially irresponsible. The contradiction isn’t resolvable because it was never meant to be—it justifies keeping wages low (“they’d just waste it anyway”) while keeping workers in debt to maintain consumption.

Contradiction Two: The Credential Paradox

The Promise: Pursue higher education and professional credentials to secure stable, well-paying employment.

The Reality: Those same professional white-collar jobs are now the primary targets of AI automation—and even when they exist, they don’t protect against systematic wage discrimination.

The disconnect becomes sharper when examining what Americans can actually afford. An Investopedia analysis estimated that achieving the traditional American Dream—owning a home, getting married, raising children, saving for retirement—costs approximately $3.4 million over a lifetime.19 Yet median lifetime earnings for the typical U.S. worker stand at just $1.7 million, according to Georgetown University researchers.20 By this calculus, the American Dream isn’t merely difficult; for most people, it’s mathematically impossible.

Student debt compounds these challenges. Approximately 46.2 million borrowers carry federal student loans, with repayment averaging 20 years despite standard 10-year plans.21 Some federal repayment plans extend to 30 years.22 For millions of Americans, this debt burden postpones or permanently prevents achieving traditional milestones.

The Census Bureau documented this shift in concrete terms. In 2024, only 21% of Americans aged 25-34 had achieved four traditional adult milestones: working, being married, having children, and living independently from parents.23 That represents a dramatic collapse from 48% in 1975.24 As Census analysts Paul Hemez and Jonathan Vespa concluded, young adults now “prioritize economic security over starting a family, reflecting the rising burden of housing, food, gas and other costs.”25

Yet even obtaining professional credentials no longer guarantees economic security—particularly for women and people of color who face systematic wage gaps that persist regardless of education level.

Women with college degrees earn $12.12 less per hour than men with the same education—a gap of $25,200 annually—representing a 24.2% wage disparity, according to Economic Policy Institute research.26 More strikingly, women with advanced degrees earn less per hour ($49.45) than men with only bachelor’s degrees ($50.01).27

The gender wage gap widened for the second consecutive year to 19.1% in 2024, the lowest earnings ratio since 2016, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.28 This occurred even as more women than men obtain college degrees.

Occupational segregation compounds these disparities. Only 34.2% of Hispanic women and 42.6% of Black women work in higher-paying management and professional jobs, compared to 58.1% of white women, according to New York State Department of Labor data.29 Fifteen of the 20 highest-paying occupations are dominated by men, while 14 of the 20 lowest-paying jobs are dominated by women, per the American Association of University Women.30

Service occupations—where one in four Latina women work—pay median weekly earnings of just $646.31 These aren’t “unskilled” positions; they’re systematically undervalued. The promise that professional jobs provide economic security rings hollow when the credentials themselves don’t protect against wage discrimination.

Workers invested years and accumulated massive debt pursuing degrees they were told would guarantee middle-class stability. Instead, they discovered that gender and race trump education in determining compensation—and that even when credentials deliver higher wages, those jobs are vanishing to automation.

Contradiction Three: The Automation Apocalypse

The Narrative: Avoid manufacturing and blue-collar work; pursue knowledge work and professional careers for long-term security.

The Reality: AI and automation specifically target white-collar jobs—the very “professional” positions Americans were told to pursue for economic security.

The warnings are no longer theoretical. They’re coming from the people building the technology.

In May 2025, Dario Amodei, CEO of AI company Anthropic, issued a stark warning that sent shockwaves through corporate America: Artificial intelligence could eliminate 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years, potentially spiking unemployment to 10-20%.32

“Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen,” Amodei told Axios, referring to policymakers, corporate leaders, and workers themselves. “It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it.”33

But the data suggests Amodei isn’t exaggerating. U.S. employers announced 1.17 million job cuts through November 2025—the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.34 This represents a 54% increase from the same period in 2024.35

The technology sector led private-sector cuts, eliminating 153,536 jobs through November 2025, a 17% jump from 2024.36 Artificial intelligence was explicitly cited for 54,694 layoffs this year alone.37 Since companies began tracking AI as a reason for cuts in 2023, the technology has been blamed for more than 71,000 announced job eliminations.38

Goldman Sachs Research estimates that if current AI use cases expand across the economy, 2.5% of U.S. employment would face displacement risk.39 However, the research also notes that technology-driven job creation has historically dwarfed displacement—approximately 60% of workers today are in occupations that didn’t exist in 1940.40

Yet 2025 has produced troubling early signals. Unemployment among 20-30 year-olds in tech-exposed occupations rose nearly 3 percentage points since early 2025, notably higher than for same-aged workers in other fields or for older tech workers.41 Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found a striking correlation between AI exposure and unemployment increases across occupations from 2022 to 2025, with computer and mathematical occupations—scoring around 80% on AI exposure metrics—experiencing some of the steepest unemployment rises.42

J.P. Morgan’s economics team identified a “mildly negative correlation” between employment trends and AI usage, suggesting AI may already be depressing job growth in certain sectors.43 The cloud computing, web search, and computer systems design industries—all heavily exposed to AI—stopped growing at the end of 2022, just after ChatGPT’s release, after years of steady employment gains.44

The displacement appears to fall heaviest on entry-level positions and recent graduates. SignalFire research shows Big Tech companies reduced new graduate hiring by 25% in 2024 compared to 2023.45 The unemployment rate for college graduates has ticked upward and now trends above the aggregate rate—contradicting the historical pattern where higher education provided robust employment protection.46 Unemployment among college graduates rose from 2.3% in November 2024 to 2.9% by November 2025, narrowing the gap with high school graduates.47

Recent college graduates face particular devastation. They carry an average unemployment rate of 4.8%, with over 41% working jobs that don’t require their degrees—precisely the opposite of what they were promised when accumulating student debt to pursue “professional” credentials.48

Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, echoed the warning in July 2025: AI “will replace literally half of all white-collar workers.”49 A McKinsey report found 30% of companies are planning AI-driven layoffs in 2026.50

National University research found that workers aged 18-24 are 129% more likely than those over 65 to worry AI will make their jobs obsolete.51 Perhaps more concerning, 49% of Gen Z job seekers believe AI has reduced the value of their college education.52

The cruelest irony: Unlike previous waves of automation that primarily affected blue-collar manufacturing jobs, AI specifically targets knowledge workers earning $40,000 to $80,000 annually—precisely those who followed conventional wisdom to get college degrees and pursue professional careers for financial stability.

Goldman Sachs researchers identified computer programmers, accountants and auditors, legal and administrative assistants, and customer service representatives as facing the highest displacement risk.53 Conversely, installation and repair work, skilled trades, construction, healthcare roles, and personal services remain substantially insulated from AI automation.54

Entry-level positions that historically served as career launching pads are vanishing. Companies are no longer hiring recent graduates to train into mid-level roles; they’re deploying AI agents that work instantly, indefinitely, and exponentially cheaper. Workers were told for decades to avoid manufacturing and pursue knowledge work. Now they’re being told those jobs are disappearing too.

Contradiction Four: The Growth That Doesn’t Reach Workers

The Narrative: The economy is growing, unemployment is low, and macroeconomic indicators show resilience and expansion.

The Reality: Economic growth has become dangerously concentrated among the wealthiest Americans, creating a statistical mirage where aggregate indicators show expansion while most workers experience stagnation or decline.

While unemployment remains historically low by some measures—hovering around 4.2% to 4.6% through much of 202555—beneath that headline figure lie warning signs of deteriorating conditions for specific groups and occupations.

The unemployment rate rose from 3.8% in late 2023 to 4.2% by the fourth quarter of 2024, with the number of unemployed Americans climbing from 6.4 million to 7.0 million.56 More concerning, the duration of unemployment has extended. By September 2025, the median unemployed person remained jobless for 10 weeks, meaning someone who lost their job in mid-September typically wouldn’t find reemployment until December.57

Disparities by demographic group have widened sharply. Black unemployment rose to 7.5% by September 2025, with Black women experiencing particularly acute increases—from 6.1% in November 2024 to 8.1% a year later, the highest rate since May 2016 outside the pandemic.58 For Black women, median unemployment duration reached 18.5 weeks in September 2025, more than double the 10-week national median.59

Young workers face especially grim prospects. Unemployment among 20-24 year-olds hit 9.2% in September 2025 before declining to 8.3% in November, still markedly elevated compared to pre-pandemic norms.60 More troublingly, 537,000 people left the labor force in September 2025 because they believed no work was available—up 20% from the prior year.61

Yet even as workers struggle, corporate profits have soared to approximately 11% of GDP—double the 5-7% range that prevailed from the end of World War II until 2000, according to Deutsche Bank analysis.62 Meanwhile, wages and salaries as a share of GDP declined from 58.5% in 1970 to approximately 51.7% today, per Federal Reserve data.63

Economic Policy Institute research reveals that productivity—how much economic value each hour of work generates—has grown far faster than pay since the late 1970s.64 When productivity and pay moved in lockstep from 1948 through the mid-1970s, it was because specific policies were designed to spread growth broadly. When those policies were abandoned, the gains flowed elsewhere: into higher profits for shareholders and into salaries for highly-paid executives.

CEO compensation at the 350 largest U.S. firms reached nearly 300 times typical worker pay as of 2013, up from a 20-to-1 ratio in 1965, according to EPI analysis.65 This explosion in executive pay occurred despite no corresponding increase in executives’ contribution to corporate output—CEO pay grew three times faster than the earnings of the top 0.1% of wage earners and twice as fast as corporate profits themselves.66

The National Employment Law Project examined the 50 largest low-wage employers in America and found that 92% were profitable, 78% had been profitable for three consecutive years, and 75% had higher revenues than before the 2008 recession.67 Yet these companies shared profits generously with executives and shareholders while wages for frontline workers remained stagnant.

Morgan Stanley Research projects consumer spending to grow 3.7% in 2025, down from 5.7% in 2024—with lower- and middle-income consumers showing the most pronounced slowdown.68 This bifurcated reality means economic indicators show “growth” driven by wealthy household consumption while the majority of workers experience stagnant wages and declining purchasing power.

The system works exactly as designed—for those it was designed to benefit.

The Generational Divide

These material changes—stagnating wages, housing unaffordability, mounting debt, technological disruption—are fundamentally reshaping how Americans think about opportunity and mobility.

The generational divide is particularly stark. Among Americans 65 and older, 68% still believe the American Dream remains achievable.69 For those 50-64, that figure drops to 61%.70 But among 18-29 year-olds, only 39% maintain that faith.71

An American Enterprise Institute analysis of Pew data found that Gen Z’s pessimism has accelerated dramatically. In 2017, 87% of Gen Z respondents believed they had achieved or were well on their way to achieving the American Dream, with just 11% feeling it was out of reach.72 By 2024, that proportion tripled: 36% of Gen Z now report the American Dream is out of their reach—a stunning reversal in just seven years.73

The divide extends beyond age to income and race. Among upper-income Americans, 64% believe the American Dream remains possible, compared to only 39% of lower-income respondents—a 25-percentage-point gap.74 Black Americans were about twice as likely as other racial groups to say the American Dream was never possible, with 11% holding that view.75

Importantly, only 31% of Americans in 2024 said they had achieved the American Dream, while 30% reported it was out of reach for them—nearly double the 17% who felt that way in 2017.76 This represents a fundamental shift not merely in sentiment but in lived experience.

The redefinition of success itself reflects this transformation. When GoDaddy surveyed small business owners about their definition of the American Dream, 54% described it as “feeling happy in life” rather than traditional markers like homeownership or wealth accumulation.77 As GoDaddy’s chief marketing officer Fara Howard observed, “Economic conditions have resulted in homeownership being less attainable, particularly for members of Gen Z, while the pandemic and the Great Resignation have driven many to prize being their own boss and gaining more freedom, comfort and flexibility.”78

Who Benefits from the Trap?

These four contradictions aren’t accidents. They’re features of an economic system redesigned over four decades to transfer wealth upward while demanding impossible choices from workers.

When workers are blamed for spending too much, it justifies keeping wages low—”they’d just waste it anyway.” When they’re blamed for not spending enough, it justifies keeping them in debt to maintain consumption. When professional credentials fail to deliver promised wages, it justifies paying women and people of color less for the same work. When AI displaces workers, it justifies cutting labor costs and boosting profits.

As the Al Jazeera analysis concluded, “One cannot truly have consumer capitalism if most consumers cannot make enough money to afford to rent or buy a home, take a vacation, or even pay for food and basic healthcare.”79

The Political Vacuum

Both major political parties have failed to confront these contradictions. Democrats offer sympathy without structural change; Republicans offer individual responsibility without acknowledging systematic barriers. Neither addresses the fundamental redesign of an economy that increasingly extracts value from workers rather than creating opportunity for them.

Steve Bannon, influential in the first Trump administration, told Axios that the destruction of entry-level managerial and tech jobs will become a major issue in the 2028 presidential race: “I don’t think anyone is considering how administrative, managerial, and tech jobs for people under 30—those crucial early-career roles—are going to be wiped out.”80

Yet despite this looming crisis, serious policy responses remain absent. Neither party has proposed comprehensive strategies to address AI displacement, restore wage growth to match productivity, or break the cycle forcing Americans into impossible economic choices.

Structural Implications and the Path Forward

The erosion of faith in the American Dream represents more than a crisis of confidence—it reflects genuine structural problems that demand attention from policymakers, employers, and institutions.

First, the labor market’s fragmentation creates acute vulnerabilities for specific demographic groups. The deterioration in Black workers’ labor market outcomes and the struggles of young workers to enter stable employment suggest that macroeconomic resilience measured in aggregate masks profound disparities. As the Economic Policy Institute warned, Black workers’ experiences often serve as a bellwether, experiencing downturns first and most severely.81

Second, the AI transition presents both risks and opportunities, but without intentional policy interventions, displaced workers face extended unemployment. Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis noted that unemployment is “self-perpetuating”—job searchers lose momentum, skills deteriorate, and employers become less likely to hire applicants with longer unemployment durations.82 This creates potential for a generation scarred by early-career setbacks that compound over decades.

Third, the K-shaped economy—where the wealthy drive consumption while the majority struggles—is economically unsustainable. Fourth, education’s changing value proposition demands attention. The simultaneous rise in college graduate unemployment and the decline in certificate completions versus traditional degrees suggests the labor market is rewarding different skills than educational institutions are providing.83 With 77% of new AI-related jobs requiring master’s degrees, the skills gap threatens to further stratify opportunity.84

Dario Amodei suggests several mitigation strategies: speed up public awareness of workforce changes, slow job displacement by helping workers understand how to augment rather than be replaced by AI, invest in reskilling programs, and consider a “token tax” on AI usage to fund redistribution programs compensating displaced workers.85

Yet within this grim picture lie potential pathways forward. Research suggests the creation of 97 million new roles globally by 2030—even as 85 million jobs are displaced—indicating technological change need not be purely destructive.86 Healthcare, skilled trades, and personal services continue to offer stable employment less vulnerable to automation.87 The growth in entrepreneurship and alternative work arrangements reflects Americans’ adaptability when traditional paths narrow.

The question is whether institutions will adapt to support these transitions. That means workforce development programs that actually match labor market demand, education financing that doesn’t saddle young people with crippling debt, wage policies that keep pace with productivity and cost of living, and technology governance that ensures AI augments rather than simply replaces workers.

Conclusion

The American Dream’s decline isn’t inevitable, but restoring broad-based belief in upward mobility requires confronting uncomfortable realities about how the economy distributes gains and losses.

The data reveals Americans aren’t irrationally pessimistic—they’re rationally responding to lived experience. When the cost of achieving the American Dream exceeds twice the typical lifetime earnings, when young workers face unemployment rates approaching 10%, when college degrees no longer guarantee employment stability, when 74% of people abandon their goals due to economic pressure, skepticism isn’t a failure of imagination. It’s an accurate assessment.

The fundamental issue isn’t that Americans need better financial literacy or more AI skills. The issue is that an economy designed to concentrate wealth upward while demanding consumption from workers with declining purchasing power is inherently unsustainable.

The American Dream was never a guarantee—it was a bargain. Work hard, follow the rules, and you’ll have a shot at building a better life. What’s eroding isn’t the dream itself but the evidence that the bargain still holds.

Seventy-three percent expect higher grocery prices next month. Sixty-nine percent believe the American Dream doesn’t hold true anymore or never did. Only 25% believe they have a good chance of improving their living standard. These aren’t temporary sentiment dips waiting for the next economic cycle to correct. These are structural breaks in the social contract—the understanding that hard work leads to prosperity, that education creates opportunity, that each generation does better than the last.

The contradictions trapping American workers aren’t puzzles to solve through individual action. They’re systemic features of an economic order that has abandoned the pretense of shared prosperity. Restoring faith in the American Dream will require more than optimistic rhetoric. It will demand structural changes that make opportunity more than a statistical abstraction for the fortunate few and restore it as a genuine possibility for the many.

The American Dream didn’t die of natural causes. It was killed by an economic system that made it impossible to achieve—and then blamed workers for failing to reach it.

Citations

Footnotes

  1. Axios. (2025, September 2). Belief in the American dream hits record low. Wall Street Journal-NORC survey. ↩
  2. Ibid. ↩
  3. ABC News/Ipsos. (2024, January 15). American dream far from reality for most people: POLL. ↩
  4. “The Majority of Americans (74%) are Abandoning Their American Dream in Response to Current Economic Pressure,” Business Wire via Morningstar, October 8, 2025, https://www.morningstar.com/news/business-wire/20251008430813. ↩
  5. Gabriel Borelli, “Can the American dream be achieved? Americans have divided views,” Pew Research Center, July 2, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/02/americans-are-split-over-the-state-of-the-american-dream/. ↩
  6. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2025, September 26). Gross Domestic Product, 2nd Quarter 2025 (Third Estimate). ↩
  7. Donald A. Barr, “The American Dream is officially over,” Al Jazeera, March 28, 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/3/27/the-american-dream-is-officially-over. ↩
  8. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. (2025, November 25). Consumption concentration may be up, adding slightly to economic fragility. ↩
  9. “The state of the US consumer,” McKinsey & Company, December 2025, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/the-state-of-the-us-consumer. ↩
  10. Ibid. ↩
  11. Alicia Wallace, “Consumer spending stalled in September as inflation remained stubborn,” CNN Business, December 5, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/05/economy/us-pce-consumer-spending-inflation-september. ↩
  12. “Personal income and spending August 2025,” EY, September 26, 2025, https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/strategy/macroeconomics/personal-income-and-spending. ↩
  13. Experian. (2025, November 17). Average American Debt by Age, US State, Credit Score and Type in 2025. ↩
  14. Federal Reserve. (2025). Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, Q3 2025. ↩
  15. Clever Real Estate. (2024, April 3). American Spending Habits: 2024 Data. ↩
  16. Bank of America Institute. (2025). Paycheck to Paycheck: Slowing but Growing. ↩
  17. Ibid. ↩
  18. Deloitte. (2025, November). State of the US consumer: November 2025. ↩
  19. “Pew finds nation divided on whether the American Dream is still possible,” CBS News, July 2, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/american-dream-is-still-possible-pew/. ↩
  20. Ibid. ↩
  21. Deanza Andriansyah, “The end of the American Dream and why it’s OK,” New University, February 19, 2025, https://newuniversity.org/2025/02/19/the-end-of-the-american-dream-and-why-its-ok/. ↩
  22. Ibid. ↩
  23. “The Death of the American Dream?,” WMAL, August 7, 2025, https://www.wmal.com/2025/08/07/the-death-of-the-american-dream/. ↩
  24. Ibid. ↩
  25. Ibid. ↩
  26. Economic Policy Institute. (2024, March). Equal Pay Day: Gender pay gap hits historic low in 2024. ↩
  27. Ibid. ↩
  28. Institute for Women’s Policy Research. (2025, September). Gender Wage Gap Worsens for Second Year in a Row. ↩
  29. New York State Department of Labor. (2025, March 25). 2025 Update: The Gender Wage Gap. ↩
  30. American Association of University Women. (2025). Gender pay gap statistics. ↩
  31. New York State Department of Labor. (2025, March 25). 2025 Update: The Gender Wage Gap. ↩
  32. Fortune. (2025, May 28). AI could make half of all entry-level white-collar jobs vanish, Anthropic CEO warns. ↩
  33. Axios. (2025, May 28). AI jobs danger: Sleepwalking into a white-collar bloodbath. ↩
  34. Challenger, Gray & Christmas. (2025, December 4). Layoff announcements top 1.17 million this year. ↩
  35. Ibid. ↩
  36. Ibid. ↩
  37. CNBC. (2025, December 21). AI was behind over 50,000 layoffs in 2025. ↩
  38. Ibid. ↩
  39. Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, “How Will AI Affect the Global Workforce?,” Goldman Sachs, August 13, 2025, https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/how-will-ai-affect-the-global-workforce. ↩
  40. Ibid. ↩
  41. Ibid. ↩
  42. Serdar Ozkan and Nicholas Sullivan, “Is AI Contributing to Rising Unemployment? Evidence from Occupational Variation,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis On the Economy, August 26, 2025, https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/aug/is-ai-contributing-unemployment-evidence-occupational-variation. ↩
  43. Brenda Duverce, “AI’s Impact on Job Growth,” J.P. Morgan Global Research, https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/global-research/artificial-intelligence/ai-impact-job-growth. ↩
  44. Ibid. ↩
  45. “AI Job Displacement 2025: Which Jobs Are At Risk?,” Final Round AI, https://www.finalroundai.com/blog/ai-replacing-jobs-2025. ↩
  46. Brenda Duverce, “AI’s Impact on Job Growth.” ↩
  47. Cory Stieg, “December 2025 Labor Market Update,” Indeed Hiring Lab, December 18, 2025, https://www.hiringlab.org/2025/12/18/december-labor-market-update-final-jobs-report/. ↩
  48. MIT Study. (November 2025). AI labor market impact assessment. ↩
  49. Fortune. (2025, July). Ford CEO on AI displacement. ↩
  50. McKinsey & Company. (2025). Future workforce planning and AI adoption. ↩
  51. Timothy Prestianni, “59 AI Job Statistics: Future of U.S. Jobs,” National University, September 22, 2025, https://www.nu.edu/blog/ai-job-statistics/. ↩
  52. Ibid. ↩
  53. Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani, “How Will AI Affect the Global Workforce?” ↩
  54. Timothy Prestianni, “59 AI Job Statistics.” ↩
  55. “United States Unemployment Rate,” Trading Economics, https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate. ↩
  56. “Unemployment rate increases in the first half of 2024,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Labor Review, https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2025/article/unemployment-rate-increases-in-the-first-half-of-2024-before-leveling-off-while-the-labor-force-participation-rate-holds-fairly-steady.htm. ↩
  57. Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey, “In a Stagnating Job Market, Job Seekers Are Struggling To Find Opportunities,” Center for American Progress, November 20, 2025, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/in-a-stagnating-job-market-job-seekers-are-struggling-to-find-opportunities/. ↩
  58. Cory Stieg, “December 2025 Labor Market Update.” ↩
  59. Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey, “In a Stagnating Job Market.” ↩
  60. Cory Stieg, “December 2025 Labor Market Update.” ↩
  61. Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey, “In a Stagnating Job Market.” ↩
  62. Deutsche Bank / McGraw Hill Education. (2025, May 13). Corporate Profits Are High, While Wages Are Near Lows. ↩
  63. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Compensation of Employees as share of GDP. ↩
  64. Economic Policy Institute. The Productivity–Pay Gap. ↩
  65. Economic Policy Institute. Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts. ↩
  66. Ibid. ↩
  67. National Employment Law Project. Big Business, Corporate Profits, and the Minimum Wage. ↩
  68. Morgan Stanley Research. (2025). U.S. Consumer Spending Trends to Watch in 2025. ↩
  69. Aimee Picchi, “Younger Americans less likely to believe American dream still possible: Pew,” The Hill, July 5, 2024, https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/poverty/4756864-younger-americans-less-likely-to-believe-american-dream-survey/. ↩
  70. Ibid. ↩
  71. Ibid. ↩
  72. Samuel J. Abrams, “Shocking Number of Young Americans No Longer Believe in the American Dream,” American Enterprise Institute, July 15, 2024, https://www.aei.org/op-eds/shocking-number-of-young-americans-no-longer-believe-in-the-american-dream/. ↩
  73. Ibid. ↩
  74. Aimee Picchi, “Younger Americans less likely to believe American dream still possible.” ↩
  75. Gabriel Borelli, “Can the American dream be achieved?” ↩
  76. Samantha Smith, “Most say American dream is within reach for them,” Pew Research Center, April 14, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/10/31/most-think-the-american-dream-is-within-reach-for-them/. ↩
  77. Kamaron McNair, “41% say the American Dream is impossible to reach now, survey finds,” CNBC Make It, August 9, 2024, https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/09/american-dream-is-out-of-reach-survey-says-how-people-define-success-now.html. ↩
  78. Ibid. ↩
  79. Donald A. Barr, “The American Dream is officially over.” ↩
  80. Axios. (2025, May 28). AI jobs danger: Sleepwalking into a white-collar bloodbath. ↩
  81. “Assessing the strength of the labor market,” Economic Policy Institute, https://www.epi.org/blog/assessing-the-strength-of-the-labor-market-preliminary-downward-revisions-do-not-necessarily-signal-a-weaker-2024-labor-market-but-there-are-warning-signs-for-2025/. ↩
  82. “Still looking: A return to rising long-term unemployment?,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 2025, https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2025/still-looking-a-return-to-rising-long-term-unemployment. ↩
  83. Timothy Prestianni, “59 AI Job Statistics.” ↩
  84. Josephine Nartey, “AI Job Displacement Analysis (2025-2030),” SSRN, June 30, 2025, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5316265. ↩
  85. Fortune. (2025, June 5). Anthropic researchers predict a ‘pretty terrible decade’ for white-collar workers. ↩
  86. Josephine Nartey, “AI Job Displacement Analysis (2025-2030).” ↩
  87. Timothy Prestianni, “59 AI Job Statistics.” ↩