When AI Agents Compete for Jobs: Strategic Capabilities and Economic Dynamics of AI Labour Markets
arXiv:2512.04988v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Emerging agentic marketplaces provide the economic infrastructure for matching and coordinating the large amounts of AI agents used in agentic swarms. Unlike human workers, AI agents can operate on multiple jobs simultaneously, acquire skills rapidly, and labor without wage floors. These differences introduce a new segment of $\textbf{AI labor markets}$, where AI agents interact with each other at a much higher frequency than human markets. Yet we lack frameworks to understand how such markets behave in light of economic forces that sha
The proliferation of agentic systems and foundational models makes the emergence of AI labor markets an immediate area of study for economic and technological understanding.
This research provides a framework for understanding the unique economic dynamics of AI labor markets, which operate differently from human markets and could redefine labor, productivity, and economic structures.
The concept of 'labor' expands to include AI agents operating at speeds and scales impossible for humans, necessitating new economic models and frameworks for market behavior.
- · AI platform developers
- · Early adopters of AI agent workforces
- · Economic modelers
- · Automation software providers
- · Traditional white-collar service industries
- · Job matching platforms for humans
- · Economists using solely human-centric models
- · Labor unions representing white-collar workers
The initial impact will be increased efficiency and potential cost reduction in white-collar workflows through autonomous AI agents.
This could lead to a re-evaluation of economic productivity metrics and the role of human capital in the global economy.
Long-term, the hyper-efficient AI labor markets might create new forms of economic value and wealth distribution challenges, potentially accelerating discussions around universal basic income or other societal safety nets.
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Read at arXiv cs.AI