The United States economy added just 181,000 jobs in 2025 - a shockingly low figure for a year when gross domestic product grew at a modest but respectable 2.2 percent. The unemployment rate stands at 4.3 percent, which sounds manageable on paper. But underneath those headline numbers, something unusual is happening to Americans who work behind desks.

Lawrence Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard University, told The New York Times that what the country is going through right now - a sustained stretch of sluggish hiring and gradually climbing unemployment without an actual economic downturn - has essentially no precedent in modern history, "Hvylya" reports.

What makes this episode stand out is who it hits hardest. Typically, blue-collar and service workers take the biggest blows when the job market turns sour. White-collar workers enjoy a degree of insulation because their sectors tend to be less sensitive to economic cycles, Katz explained. This time, knowledge workers are the ones struggling to find positions.

Gad Levanon, an economist at the Burning Glass Institute, offered an explanation. Hiring has ground to a near-halt in finance, insurance, accounting, consulting and tech - the pillars of the so-called knowledge economy. Companies in these sectors have generally posted solid results while either trimming head counts or holding them flat. That pattern suggests they have found ways to boost productivity without bringing on new people.

Whether artificial intelligence is behind that shift remains an open question. But the industries Levanon flagged all involve tasks that appear ripe for automation. Last year, Microsoft published a study listing 40 occupations it considered most vulnerable to AI - from historians and PR specialists to data scientists and writers. More recently, Microsoft's AI chief executive Mustafa Suleyman stated that most professional tasks will be fully automated within 12 to 18 months.

The optimal outcome, Katz said, is that AI becomes a kind of copilot that helps workers sharpen their skills and efficiency rather than replacing them outright. IBM's recent announcement that it plans to triple entry-level hiring this year prompted some relieved chatter among office workers anxious about the AI rollout. But the gap between that hope and the numbers on the ground keeps widening.

"Hvylya" previously reported on how OpenAI has set a deadline for building its first autonomous AI research intern.