There’s no shortage these days of stories, posts and videos warning of the robot armies readying to vacuum up white-collar jobs in technology, finance, marketing, you name it. And there’s no doubt that artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how we live and work. Amid all this, though, a relative calm has descended on the labor market and should persist for the rest of this year, at least.

For workers, there were two fears coming into 2026. First, that a continued cooling in job growth would push the unemployment rate higher for a fourth straight year, and second, that rapid progress in AI would accelerate job losses. On both fronts, there are reasons to be less concerned.

Labor market data is arguably more stable now than at any time since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in 2022 to quell surging inflation. The unemployment rate is back to where it was last summer, having fallen modestly since the federal government shutdown late last year. Initial weekly jobless claims are at very low levels despite the ongoing economic and financial shocks from the war in Iran and the number of people continuing to claim unemployment benefits is no longer rising compared with a year prior. As Fed Gov. Christopher Waller noted in a speech earlier this year, we now have a better understanding of how little the labor force is growing, meaning that it doesn’t take much hiring to keep it in balance.