Mind the Gap: AI Adoption in Europe and the US

This paper combines evidence from worker and firm surveys, conducted in 2025 and 2026, to document a large gap in AI adoption between the US and Europe and between European countries. Cross-country differences in worker demographics and firm composition can account for an important share of these gaps. Variation in adoption, both within and across countries, is also closely linked to firm personnel management practices and whether firms actively encourage and support AI use by workers. Micro-level evidence from existing experimental studies and our worker surveys suggests that AI can generate meaningful time savings for individual workers. At the macro level, we find a positive but modest association between firm AI adoption and industry-level productivity growth in recent years. However, this relationship is small relative to the overall US–Europe productivity gap, and we find no evidence that AI adoption is associated with changes in employment. As AI technologies continue to evolve, timely and innovative data will be valuable for assessing their longer-run economic impact.

Please note that this event takes place in English only with no translation.

WZB Talk by Jonas Jessen and Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln

The event is part of the WZB Talks series.