Human Capital, AI, and Labor Commoditization

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.21880v1
• Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2026 04:42:33 GMT
• Title: Human Capital, AI, and Labor Commoditization
• Abstract summary: We find that in more AI-exposed job categories, the importance of human capital declines and the importance of price rises, suggesting a commoditization effect of AI on labor.<n>Our results have implications for the design of online labor markets, workers' incentives to invest in human capital, and labor welfare.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: Has generative AI changed how labor markets value human capital? We study this question using data from Upwork, a large online labor market. Representing worker profiles with high-dimensional text embeddings, we compute the importance of human capital information and price in predicting labor demand, and incorporate these measures into a difference-in-differences design around the release of ChatGPT. We find that in more AI-exposed job categories, the importance of human capital declines and the importance of price rises, suggesting a commoditization effect of AI on labor. Two additional findings support commoditization as a mechanism: The demand premium enjoyed by workers with strong human capital declines in more AI-exposed categories, and demand reallocates toward lower-priced workers. Our results have implications for the design of online labor markets, workers' incentives to invest in human capital, and labor welfare.

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