Will the Next Jobs Report Reveal the Real Cost of AI on Employment?

2026-02-01

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In this week's episode of WSJ’s Take On the Week, co-hosts Telis Demos and Miriam Gottfried are joined by WSJ economics reporter Justin Lahart to discuss why gold has smashed records, and how global instability and the "Sell America" trade has fueled the rally. Next, they look ahead to Amazon’s earnings to see if the e-commerce giant can prove AI investments are boosting the bottom line, as Meta did, or if ongoing layoffs signal deeper issues in the labor market. Justin also previews this week’s jobs report and explains why an upcom...

Then after the break, Telis and Justin are joined by Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, to unpack whether AI is actually killing jobs. Brynjolfsson shares his research into how his research has found a decline in entry-level roles, but argues a productivity boom is imminent. Later, we ask him a fun question written by Google’s Gemini app.

This is WSJ’s Take On the Week where co-hosts Telis Demos, Heard on the Street’s banking and money columnist, and Miriam Gottfried, WSJ’s private equity reporter, cut through the noise and dive into markets, the economy and finance—the big trades, key players and business news ahead.

Have an idea for a future guest or episode? How can we better help you take on the week? We’d love to hear from you. Email the show at takeontheweek@wsj.com.

To watch the video version of this episode, visit our WSJ Podcasts YouTube channel or the video page of WSJ.com