Ask a German company what artificial intelligence will do to wages, and the answer depends on who you are.
A new survey from the Munich-based Ifo Institute found that businesses using AI expect it to push pay down, and the biggest hits land on people who are new to the workforce. The same pattern is showing up in U.S. data, which makes this more than a German story.
The Ifo Institute ran the survey in June and released it Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026. More than 3,000 German companies took part.
Education is where the outlook splits. Companies are much more likely to predict salary increases for university-educated workers than for workers without a degree.
That gap is a reminder that AI is not one single force. It helps some workers and hurts others, often inside the same company.
These are expectations, not announcements. Companies are telling researchers what they think will happen to pay, not reporting changes that are already in motion.
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"For many businesses, artificial intelligence will not impact all employees equally," said Ifo researcher Anna Ruffert. "For workers with formal degrees, especially in combination with more extensive experience, businesses more frequently expect positive effects on wages due to AI to be possible."
Ifo says its findings line up with research from IESE Business School in Spain. The researchers studied what happened to U.S. pay after ChatGPT launched, using data on 138 million workers, and they found the same kind of split. The study adds weight to the German survey because it tracks actual paychecks, not just predictions.
The researchers link the shift to generative AI. Large language models - the AI systems behind tools like ChatGPT - have gotten good at drafting, summarizing, coding, and basic analysis.
Those are the tasks that usually fall to lower-seniority employees. When software can do the work, it becomes less scarce, and pay tends to follow.
For investors, this survey matters because wages are a huge cost at most companies. If AI lets businesses pay less for entry-level work, the savings can show up in profits.
AI is not a distant possibility that might someday change the economy. It is already showing up in wage data on two continents.
For the rest of us, the stakes are more personal. If you are early in your career, the research suggests an entry-level skill set is worth less to employers than it was before ChatGPT.
If you are further along, especially with a degree, the trend points the other way. AI is making your work more valuable, not less.
The job market is adjusting to AI in real time, and the adjustment starts with newer employees. That puts the earliest part of a career first in line for the change.
Where you sit in that split matters more than it used to. The technology is already big enough to move real paychecks, and it is not moving all of them in the same direction.
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