The Effect of AI on Marketing Employment: Evidence from 110m+ Online Employment Records

Abstract

Marketing is widely considered one of the job functions most exposed to generative AI, but large-scale evidence on marketing-specific employment effects remains limited. We study how the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022 affected marketing employment using a panel of over 110 million employment records from Revelio Labs covering 164,780 firms. Comparing marketing to non-marketing employees within the same firm in a difference-in-differences design, we find that marketing headcount declines by approximately 0.92% relative to non-marketing headcount after ChatGPT's release. We demonstrate that this relative decline is strongest among both junior and senior employees, while mid-level marketing employees are least affected relative to same-seniority non-marketing peers; and that within fields, the contraction is concentrated in non-digital marketing and customer service employees in particular, while sales employment has enjoyed a modest relative increase. Lastly, we show in triple-differences analyses that the relative decline in marketing headcount is significantly larger in firms and industries with higher pre-period AI exposure.

Keywords: marketing, generative AI, marketing strategy, labor economics