> How do we know that the rise in unemployment is being driven by AI specifically, and not by wider economic circumstances?.

There are several important things to look at that show this. First and foremost, IT has about a 40 year history now, with corresponding economic data.

In its entire history, its been uncorrelated with interest rates and other assets. These correlated assets are what most people refer to when they speak of wider economic circumstance. The IT industry is uncorrelated with this, with 40 years to back that up.

IT labor markets are however strongly correlated with advances in information technology. This correlation is found throughout that dataset as well, in both the boom and bust cycles.

The deep unemployment which we are seeing here, which doesn't include the first batch of laid off employees two years ago [18 mo], is only correlated and impacted by Information Technology advances.

There is only one such major advance that has been made in this time period... Artificial Intelligence.

AI has improved dramatically from a modular swappable design, and it can replace entry level positional tasks completely. It probably won't ever be able to take over the senior level positions, or the mid level positions, but that doesn't matter.

The companies involved in integrating these things into the production environment have mislead most of their customers, and in the process burnt all the bridges. Many of these companies market towards replacing workers with AI, grossly negligent of the whipsaw they are creating with that misleading narrative. In the short term they make lots of profit, while destroying the environment they need to sustain themselves.

By choking off the professional development pipeline which is a sequential pipeline in developing talent, this leaves few opportunities to progress to mid and senior level positions, which were few and far between to begin with.

When there is no economic incentive to go into any specialized field because AI has burnt the only bridge for a long-term career, people don't go into these jobs. Worse, those caught surprised by this change in circumstance, who actually have sufficient experience to perform at these mid-level ranges, may abandon the profession causing exponential brain drain. As anyone knows, people age and eventually die. Senior level people are at greater risk to this than others.

This inevitably creates a tsunami of cost in those irreplaceable positions which cannot be addressed by the market, and balloons far above what the market can bare. The forward looking expectations have made any labor in this industry worth less than AI services, and IT as a general rule is a labor multiplier where changes here eventually expand and infect everywhere.

Business is not constrained in hiring people because many business receive operations funding upfront from their financial engineering which often comes from money printers. By the time they notice the problem, it will be too late to solve it, in many respects its already too late because you have people who are incredibly competent, near geniuses, and they see no future in the industry and are retraining ahead of the curve.

AI threatens society because it disrupts the core pillars of society, which is indirect but immeasurably important to sustained organization of labor and food production. Agriculture is dependent on something like 64 different intermediate producers to maintain production levels sufficient to feed people.

Failures back to pre-modern industrial technology would mean half the people alive today starve to death, no matter how much they work.

These are the issues which the article doesn't really touch on correctly but its WSJ so what do you expect. Their journalism has never really been up to snuff.