An official website of the United States government
United States Department of Labor
United States Department of Labor
The .gov means it's official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information,
make sure you're on a federal government site.
The site is secure.
The
https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any
information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.
Office of Survey Methods Research
SHARE ON:
More Information
Published Year: 2026
Survey/Program(s): Office of Productivity and Technology
Catalog: Economic Working Paper
WP Number: WP-591
Download PDF
AI Exposure and Adoption among U.S. Firms
Abstract
Measures of exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) are widely used to study where
AI is likely to affect firm and worker outcomes, yet limited evidence exists on how
closely exposure relates to realized AI adoption or use at the firm level. We explore
this relationship by linking 14 firm-level exposure measures constructed by combining
occupational exposure measures from the literature with occupational employment
shares from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey microdata
and measures of firm adoption from the Census Bureau’s Business Trends and
Outlook Survey. Exposure is generally positively and statistically significantly associated
with adoption, but explains only a modest share of its variation. The strength
of the relationship also varies considerably across standardized exposure measures: a
one-standard-deviation increase in exposure is associated with a 4–11 percentage point
higher adoption probability, falling to 1–8 percentage points after controlling for year
and industry fixed effects. The exposure–adoption relationship is also heterogeneous
across firm-size classes and sectors. Exposure is thus an informative but incomplete
signal of adoption. More broadly, the results have implications for the interpretation
of exposure-based measures in studies of AI’s economic effects.