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Apricitas links a four-year decline of more than 200,000 U.S. jobs in creative industries, including roughly 50,000 lost in the most recent year, to mounting pressure on digital-media business models as generative AI spreads. The publication says movie and sound recording lost more than 100,000 jobs, nearly one-third of its workforce, while written publishing lost more than 70,000 jobs. It says in-person entertainment continues to grow, contrasting with declines across digital creative sectors, but acknowledges that AI’s role is difficult to separate from consolidation, offshoring, streaming and competition from social platforms. The analysis compares generative AI’s potential effects with the internet’s disruption of music, video and publishing. It argues that piracy and streaming reduced recorded-music revenue and shifted musicians toward concerts and merchandise, while newspapers lost advertising and readership as information moved online. It says Hollywood faces falling ticket and cable revenue alongside competition from free user-generated and AI-generated content, without a live-performance equivalent to offset losses. About 32% of arts, entertainment and recreation workers use generative AI to some extent, according to the publication. Apricitas also notes that book sales rose 70% over the past six years amid BookTok’s influence, underscoring that technology can create unpredictable demand. It argues creative-sector losses could foreshadow broader disruption in tech and other creative-adjacent work.

US tech employment has declined even as the wider economy added jobs, with information-sector payrolls falling to 2.739 million in September 2026, 12% below their November 2022 peak. Indeed’s US software-development postings peaked in February 2022, before ChatGPT’s November launch, and had already fallen 36% by then. The data attributes the initial contraction to higher interest rates and the unwinding of pandemic-era hiring. The recovery in hiring has favored senior workers and AI-specific roles rather than restoring broad tech employment. US software-development postings rose 16% from January 2025 to October 2026 while information-sector employment fell 5%. CompTIA counted 349,821 US tech postings requiring AI skills in September 2026, or 56% of active tech postings; Indeed found senior positions accounted for 71% of the rebound in software-development postings from May 2025 to May 2026. AI-skilled roles carried an estimated 56% wage premium. Job losses have increasingly occurred through attrition rather than mass layoffs. The US layoffs rate was 1.0% in August 2026, while the hires rate was 3.3%. Similar shifts toward AI and experienced hires appear in India and China. Youth unemployment was 14.5% for US workers aged 16–19, 19.0% for urban Indians aged 15–29, and 18.9% for urban Chinese workers aged 16–24 excluding students.