The Census Bureau asked businesses that use AI what it had done to their total employment. 95.7% said nothing changed. 2.0% said employment went down. Slightly more of them, 2.3%, said it went up.
That holds in every sector and every size of company, including the heaviest users. Which means the number everyone is watching, the share of businesses using AI, is not measuring what people think it is measuring.
It is also accelerating. Adoption reached 23.8% in the fortnight ending 20 September, the highest the survey has recorded, and the last two readings sit further above trend than any reading in the series. So the two things are happening at once. Use is climbing faster than it was, and the firms doing the using are not cutting staff over it.