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From Clerks to Agentic-AI: How will Technology Change Labor Market in Finance?

Author

Listed:
  • Lu Yu
  • Xiang Li

Abstract

Financial firms have gone through three major technological waves: computerization in the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of indexing and passive investing in the 2000s and 2010s, and the AI and automation wave from roughly 2015 to the present. This project studies how much labor is required to manage capital across those waves by tracking a simple productivity measure: assets under management per employee. Using a small panel of representative firms, we compare changes in AUM per employee, revenue per employee, and operating expense intensity over time. The goal is not to identify causal effects, but to document stylized facts about how technology changes the scale of asset management work.

Suggested Citation

  • Lu Yu & Xiang Li, 2026. "From Clerks to Agentic-AI: How will Technology Change Labor Market in Finance?," Papers 2604.19833, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2604.19833
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Erik Brynjolfsson & Anton Korinek & Ajay K. Agrawal, 2025. "A Research Agenda for the Economics of Transformative AI," NBER Working Papers 34256, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Ajay K. Agrawal & Erik Brynjolfsson & Anton Korinek, 2025. "Introduction to "The Economics of Transformative AI"," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Transformative AI, pages 1-11, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & Jonas Loebbing, 2026. "Automation and Polarization," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 134(3), pages 1017-1072.
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