Customer service representatives

This is where the clearest empirical finding in the field lands. Stanford’s payroll-data study shows the damage is concentrated on the entry rung: 22–25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed occupations now sit 19% below where they would be had they kept pace — 15% a year earlier — while experienced workers in those same occupations show no such gap.Stanford 2026

Two details matter more than the headline. Adjustments came through hiring, not pay — the people already in the job kept it and kept their wages. And the decline concentrated in occupations where AI automates rather than augments, which is a distinction the Stanford authors treat as the mechanism, not an afterthought.Stanford 2026

So the loss is not “customer service is gone”. It is that the apprenticeship into customer service stopped admitting anyone.