The Economist counted about a million American jobs created by AI since 2023, and that count is solid. But look at what those jobs actually are: electricians, HVAC techs, equipment makers, data-centre technicians. People building and running the buildings, not people using the software. Only about one per cent of professional jobs are AI jobs. That matters, because a number like this tracks how much money companies are spending, not how good the technology is. If the models stopped improving tomorrow, hiring would keep going for a year because the contracts are already signed. If the models kept improving but three big spenders cut their budgets, the hiring would stop cold. So the figure is a spending indicator, not proof the technology works. And the people using it to say there’s no problem are missing that the office jobs going quiet and the construction jobs booming are two different labour markets with two different sets of people in them.

We are likely in the early stages of another productivity boom.

You can feel it before you can fully measure it. Not in the official statistics yet, not neatly captured in GDP releases or quarterly productivity reports, but in the way work itself is beginning to change. Tasks that used to take hours now collapse into minutes. Layers of friction around research, drafting, analysis, coordination, and execution are starting to thin out. The shift is still uneven, still messy, but it is becoming difficult to ignore.