New California Tracker Shows Spike in Bay Area AI-related Layoffs but No Statewide Impact

The online tracker’s goal is to provide state policymakers, researchers, and the public with close to real-time data on the current state of the job market.

An advertisement for the AI company Artisan on 2nd Street in San Francisco on Dec. 5, 2024. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

California has started to track how AI may impact the job market by analyzing data from the state’s unemployment claims. A new report accompanying the tracker shows increased layoffs concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area following the growth of AI, but no general statewide impact.

The online tool aims to detect early signs of potential AI-related job displacements among specific industries, groups of workers, or regions. The tracker was created by the nonpartisan California Policy Lab at the University of California, in partnership with the California Employment Development Department.

Published alongside the tracker was a June 2026 report, which notes three main findings. First is that, overall, there has been “no evidence of a surge in AI-related layoffs” statewide.

Data showed that trends in overall unemployment claims from 2019 to May 2026 all fell within “normal seasonal patterns,” except for the disruption caused during the pandemic period, with no significant increase after the release of the AI chatbot ChatGPT-3.5.

In its second major finding, however, the report states that for one group of people—college-educated workers from industries with high exposure to AI—unemployment claims showed an increase after the 2022 launch of ChatGPT-3.5 and have remained high through May 2026.

Claims from workers with a bachelor’s degree rose between November 2022 and July 2023 from around 13,000 to more than 22,000 claims per month. This group continued to have “an elevated claims level” of roughly 16,000 per month as of May 2026.

The report notes, however, that this increase in unemployment claims could also align with the “tech sector layoffs after the COVID-19 remote-work boom.”

The third main finding was that a “sharp and sustained increase” in unemployment claims has come from certain types of workers in the San Francisco Bay Area, home of the state’s technology sector. The number of unemployment claims from high-AI-exposure workers based in the Bay Area increased by over 50 percent after the release of ChatGPT 3.5.

“We do see patterns in certain regions like the Bay Area, in certain tech-heavy sectors, and among highly AI-exposed workers with college degrees,” said report co-author Ben Hyman, senior researcher at the California Policy Lab, in a press release. “It will be important to continue monitoring trends for those workers, as well as others, so that policymakers can respond appropriately.”

The online tracker’s goal is to provide state policymakers, researchers, and the public with close to real-time data on the current state of the job market, according to the press release.

“AI is advancing quickly, and workers’ concerns about what that could mean for their jobs are real,” said report co-author Till von Wachter, professor of economics at UCLA and faculty director of the California Policy Lab’s UCLA site. “This new tracker helps replace speculation with evidence, giving us a clearer understanding of what’s changing and how to best support affected workers.”

The report also notes a few limitations in its method of measuring AI’s impact on job markets. Because the tracker only uses data from state unemployment claims, workers who lose their jobs but do not claim unemployment benefits are left out of the data. This includes people who have found a new job, have exited the labor force altogether, or are self-employed.

Additionally, the spike in unemployment claims in 2023 “likely reflects broader post-pandemic labor market dynamics,” while the more recent persistence in claims among college-educated workers and those in tech is “less easily explained by COVID-era factors.”

“This pattern is descriptive, and cannot be definitively attributed to AI without information on firm-specific AI adoption,” the report states.

It suggests that continuous tracking of potential AI-related job cuts could provide better context and help calibrate the data.

The report and online tracking tool resulted from an order signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last month mandating that the state government look into how the rise of AI might be impacting workers in California amid growing reports of layoffs hitting the tech industry.