AILSA CHANG, HOST:
AI is already affecting the job market, including for people under the age of 20. Wailin Wong and Stephan Bisaha of The Indicator talked to a teenager who wrote a research paper on how AI could impact teen jobs.
WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: Karissa Tang's story starts with boba.
STEPHAN BISAHA, BYLINE: Oh, bubble tea, right?
WONG: Yes. She's a 17-year-old high school senior who lives in Silicon Valley, and one of her aunts actually owns a boba tea shop.
KARISSA TANG: So many of my classmates asked if I can hook them up with my aunt for a summer job, but surprisingly, she wasn't in need of any employees. And this really piqued my interest because I thought, you know, it shouldn't be too hard to get a summer job.
BISAHA: Now, maybe your average teenager would have said, that's interesting, and, you know, moved on. But Karissa, she is not average. For one thing, she started volunteering as a research assistant by cold emailing George Geis. He's on the faculty at UCLA's business school.
GEORGE GEIS: Most of us, you know, in the faculty get approached maybe at least once a month by students who want to do something with us and work. But Karissa stood out.
WONG: George encouraged Karissa to pursue her own research project, and this brings us back to her aunt not hiring any teens for her boba shop.
TANG: And I learned that it's because AI-powered kiosks were replacing the counter roles at many tea shops. So that takes out - what? - two to three employees per shop? And then I looked into a bit more and saw that AI was taking over many teen jobs, for example, AI-powered self-checkout. Then that launched me into this research paper.
BISAHA: Karissa set out to quantify the impact of AI on teenage jobs. And here's what she did. First, she looked up the top 10 most popular jobs for workers ages 16 to 19 based on BLS data. The No. 1 job is cashier. Around 13% of teens are in this role. That was my teenage job as well.
WONG: Nice (laughter).
BISAHA: No. 2 is restaurant server. No. 3 is fast-food counter worker.
WONG: After Karissa compiled the list of top 10 jobs, she researched AI technology that could displace those jobs. Take restaurant cooks, for example. About 5% of working teens are cooks, according to the BLS.
BISAHA: And Karissa learned about a cooking robot that's used by restaurants like White Castle. The robot is an automated fry station that can make french fries and chicken tenders.
TANG: I would look at the current amount of units deployed for cooking robots and then the growth rate for them, and then from there determined the number of units expected to be deployed in five years.
WONG: Karissa repeated these steps for all of the top teen jobs, including cashiers, fast-food counter workers and customer service representatives.
TANG: If there's one headline to cap all of it off, it'd be that my analysis predicts a 27% decline in teen jobs by 2030.
WONG: A 27% decline - it's a pretty dramatic effect. Karissa calculated that the biggest loss would be in cashier jobs. That would see a 54% drop as retailers replace human cashiers with digital kiosks and self-checkout stations.
BISAHA: There were some bright spots in Karissa's analysis, like some teen jobs look to be safe from AI displacement in the near future. These include restaurant hosts and cooks.
WONG: So like those fry robots you talked about, Stephan, they don't pose a huge threat in the short term. Karissa's analysis determined that the impact on teen cooks would be minimal, at least before 2030. And one of her first jobs is probably safe, too - coaching basketball at her old middle school.
Wailin Wong.
BISAHA: Stephan Bisaha, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
