New research from Apollo Global Management shows the technology’s earliest measurable damage isn’t job losses, but smaller paychecks. For instance, Software Finder reports that workers who resist AI earn roughly 20% less on average than those who embrace it, $65,645 versus $81,526. This aligns with what Fortune reported in March: AI is shrinking work, which means companies can assign more work to their workers. A quieter, harder-to-see threatAI’s wage-compressing effect, if Slok’s data holds up, would fit a much older pattern rather than break from one. What emerges from all of this is a labor story that resists the clean narrative either side wants to tell.