Job losses in the information sector are piling up
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The information sector lost 23,000 jobs in August, and its employment is now down by about 12% since peaking in 2022.
Why it matters: That's 370,000 lost jobs over four years across the movie and music industries, telecom and media, as well as data processing, web hosting and other information services.
- The decline got less attention last week when the August employment report showed surprisingly strong hiring.
The big picture: It's tempting to blame AI, and certainly the technology is starting to impact hiring and firing decisions, but it's more complicated.
Zoom in: Motion picture and sound recording jobs make up roughly one-third of the decline. The industry is grappling with the end of the streaming content boom, consolidation and production moving out of the U.S.
- The telecom and traditional publishing industries have long been shrinking.
- There was a hiring bubble coming out of the pandemic (you can see in the chart) that companies have pulled back from.
The bottom line: AI has increased the amount of information available at our fingertips, and now there are fewer jobs for humans working in the information industry.
