Dallas Fed finds AI is already cutting into Texas job postings

Artificial intelligence is already changing the Texas job market.

Texas companies are posting fewer openings for jobs that involve tasks generative AI can perform, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

The effect is still relatively small across the entire Texas job market. But for some types of jobs — particularly white-collar positions — the difference is becoming much more noticeable.

By early 2025, postings for jobs more exposed to AI had fallen about 8% compared with jobs less exposed to the technology, Dallas Fed economists Samuel Dodini and Tucker Smith found.

And this isn’t just happening at new companies built around AI. Existing Texas businesses that were more exposed to AI reduced their job postings by roughly 8% to 9% by early 2026.

The findings come as Texas businesses rapidly embrace the technology.

Two-thirds of Texas companies surveyed by the Dallas Fed in May said they were using artificial intelligence. Two years earlier, only 40% said they were using it.

Which jobs are most affected?

The Dallas Fed looked at millions of online job postings to determine which occupations are most exposed to AI.

Researchers didn’t simply ask what AI might eventually be capable of doing. They looked at tasks people are already using the Claude AI platform to perform and compared those with tasks workers perform in about 1,000 occupations.

The jobs with the greatest exposure tend to be computer-heavy and white-collar positions.

Software developers and web designers are among them. Managers, clerical workers and editors also have relatively high exposure.

Medical records technicians provide another example.

Their jobs can involve compiling patient records, coding medical information and checking records for accuracy. According to the data used by the researchers, AI can already automate nearly 5% of the tasks associated with that occupation.

That doesn’t mean AI is replacing 5% of medical records technicians.

Instead, the researchers are finding that the more of a job’s tasks AI can perform, the more employers appear to be pulling back on hiring for that job.

Companies are changing who they hire

The researchers compared Texas job postings before and after ChatGPT became publicly available in November 2022.

By the end of 2023, postings for jobs with greater exposure to AI had fallen about 5% compared with less-exposed jobs in the same industries.

By early 2025, the difference had grown to about 8%.

Researchers also looked specifically at companies that existed throughout the study period.

Those businesses showed essentially the same pattern. Companies with greater exposure to AI posted about 5% to 6% fewer jobs by mid-2024 and roughly 8% to 9% fewer by early 2026.

That matters because it suggests the change isn’t simply coming from new companies designed from the beginning to operate with fewer employees.

Existing businesses are changing their hiring, too.

They are also shifting the types of positions they advertise, moving away from jobs containing more tasks AI can automate.

AI hasn’t caused a huge drop in Texas hiring — yet

Across the entire Texas job market studied, the effect remains relatively small.

The Dallas Fed estimates exposure to generative AI reduced total online job postings in Texas by about 1.8% in 2024 and 2.6% in 2025.

The researchers also caution that online job postings don’t represent every job in Texas.

Agriculture, construction, building maintenance and personal-service jobs, for example, are less likely to appear in the online job-posting data used in the study.

And fewer job postings don’t necessarily mean companies are laying people off.

Instead, AI could be changing employment in a quieter way: When someone leaves, companies may decide they don’t need to hire as many people to replace them.

College graduates could feel it first

That could make the shift particularly important for young workers.

Many of the jobs advertised online require relatively little previous experience. Fewer than half of the typical job postings analyzed explicitly required more than two years of experience.

That means recent college graduates are competing for exactly the kinds of openings that could disappear first as companies automate more tasks.

The Dallas Fed researchers said Texas data suggest AI automation has already affected employment and earnings for recent graduates of Texas universities.

There are also signs that students are responding.

The researchers said some current Texas college students have changed what they are studying as the job market adjusts to AI.

The shift so far isn’t one of AI suddenly eliminating large numbers of Texas jobs.

It’s more subtle: Companies are increasingly using AI, and they’re beginning to post fewer openings for people whose work includes tasks the technology can now do.