Generative AI and Task Recomposition in Entry-Level IT Work: A Worker-Side Task-Level Measure

Chiara Zisler and Uschi Backes-Gellner

No 258, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: Will generative AI (GenAI) displace entry-level IT workers, or change the work they do? The answer depends on whether AI substitutes for or complements the tasks that make up entry-level jobs, a distinction that demand-side employment data cannot resolve because they do not capture task content. We study the intensive margin of entry-level IT work-i.e., how AI shapes the job content conditional on employment-rather than the extensive margin of hiring or job displacement. Using survey data on entry-level IT workers with migration backgrounds, we introduce a worker-side measure of AI-attributed task change: for each task, workers report how their working time has changed and how much of this change they attribute to AI. The measure therefore isolates AI-attributed reallocations of working time across tasks. Within-worker comparisons point more strongly to task complementarity than substitution: Workers spend more time on tasks for which they report AI-related changes, and their task portfolios shift toward a more complex core. These complementarity patterns are strongly associated with AI use, but not with education background or wages, thereby suggesting that the benefits of GenAI in entry-level IT work may depend less on formal credentials than on active engagement with the technology. Our findings provide implications for firms' decisions on job design, task allocation, and AI-related training in IT jobs.

Keywords: Generative AI; task recomposition; entry-level work; substitution or complementarity; job crafting; on-the-job learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J23 J24 M51 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2026-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ain, nep-hrm and nep-lma
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:educat:0258

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