U.S. employees who use AI at work mostly report gains in speed and creativity, but new Gallup research finds that the benefits are not evenly shared across the workforce. Regular AI use is far more common among people who already hold quality jobs, such as college graduates and managers, according to the first results from the second year of Gallup’s American Job Quality Study.
The findings rely on employees’ own assessments of how AI affects their work, and Gallup notes they do not establish whether employers would judge its effects the same way.
What workers say AI does for them
Among employees who have used AI in their job, 63% say it helps them do their work faster, and 56% say it helps them find more creative solutions. Smaller shares say it lets them spend more time on the most interesting parts of their job (47%) or helps them produce higher-quality work (46%).
About 31% of AI users say their use has led their employer to ask them to take on more responsibilities, and the share rises to 37% among users who say AI helps them work faster. Among AI users, employees aged 18 to 24 are the most likely to report being given more responsibility, at 38%, compared with 31% or less in every other age group.
Refreshed leadership advice from CEO Stephanie Mehta
Who uses it regularly
Frequent use, defined as daily or weekly, is not yet the norm. In Gallup’s January to March 2026 data, 28% of employees said they use AI at least weekly, while 54% said they had not used it in their role at all.
The gaps by education and role are large. College graduates are more than twice as likely as workers without a college degree to use AI daily or weekly (40% versus 17%), and 37% of managers are regular users compared with 25% of individual contributors.
Use also varies by industry. Roughly half of employees in professional and business services, financial activities, and information and media use AI regularly, while in healthcare support, manufacturing production, and retail sales, between 70% and more than 80% never use it in their role.