Wall Street Week: The give and take of AI and tariffs

Welcome to the Wall Street Week newsletter, bringing you stories of capitalism about things you need to know, but even more things you need to think about. I'm David Westin, and this week , and this week we told stories of two recent college grads competing with AI for jobs, and Blair Effron gave us the view of tariffs from the C-suite. If you're not yet a subscriber, sign up here for this newsletter.

Unemployment and AI

We've all heard about what generative AI could mean for the labor market, and now we're seeing it in the numbers.

Matthew Martin of Oxford Economics has looked specifically at the growing difference in unemployment levels between those who've recently graduated from college and those who haven't. Although it's hard to quantify, Martin's work tells him that "there is definitely a link" between rising unemployment for new college graduates and the adoption of AI by companies.

But like so much in life, the pain is not evenly distributed: "If we do a quick breakout of the industries of recent college graduates, females tend to move towards health care services and educational services where demand is quite high."

Jacob Ayoub and Tiffany Lee are two of those recent grads trying to get their careers underway, one in finance and the other in tech. They're having a tough time, despite their excellent academic records and work experience as interns.

Blocking the Noise

This week we saw the imposition of most of the tariffs that President Trump promised, and the effects began to show up in some of the numbers — in everything from US services stagnating to Irish whiskey distillers shutting operations. But the effects haven't appeared to be as dramatic as many has predicted.

Blair Effron, co-founder of Centerview Partners, spends much of his time in the C-suites of the largest corporations, and he's not surprised. He admits that "it's hard to talk to any CEO who thinks that tariffs are a good thing," but when it comes to CEOs and other senior officers of big companies, "they've learned to, one, operate quite apart from policy in Washington, and, two, they have been operating in a period of volatility for so many years now."

Effron is watching as large companies adapt to tariffs through changes in their supply chains and, even more important, embrace the opportunity that AI presents.