The Generative AI Adoption Tracker
The Generative AI Adoption Tracker provides a first-of-its-kind, nationally representative view of how working-age adults in the U.S. are using generative AI (genAI) in everyday life.
Developed by the Project on Workforce in partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the tracker is a public resource that visualizes the trajectory of genAI adoption over time: who is using it, how often, and how use differs across the workforce.
Key Trends
Overall genAI adoption has grown substantially over two years. August 2026 marks two years since we began measuring genAI adoption. As of August 2026, 60.8% of working-age adults use genAI overall, up from 44.6% in August 2024. Weekly use has grown from 36.1% to 53.8%, while daily use has grown much more slowly.
Workplace adoption continues to spread and is highest in knowledge-intensive fields. At work, 40.5% of employed adults now use genAI for work tasks, compared to 33.3% in August 2024. As of August 2026, the industries with the highest rates of genAI use were Information (77.0%), Management of Companies and Enterprises (69.3%), and Finance and Insurance (63.9%). The occupations with the highest rates of genAI use for work were Computer and Mathematical occupations (68.8%), Management occupations (63.3%), and Architecture and Engineering occupations (60.9%)
Access and use differ by education and earnings. Overall genAI use is 74.8% among adults with graduate degrees, compared with 54.3% among adults without a college degree. Among employees, overall genAI use is 78.1% in the top weekly earnings quartile, compared with 55.2% in the bottom quartile. The gaps are even wider when we specifically look at adoption at work. GenAI use is roughly twice as high among workers with graduate degrees as among workers without a college degree (58.2% vs. 32.6%) and among top-quartile as bottom-quartile earners (57.7% vs. 29.3%).
Explore the full tracker to see additional breakdowns (including work hours using genAI and estimated time savings) and comparisons with earlier technologies such as computers and the internet.
Methodology and Related Research
Since August 2024, we have been sourcing questions about the adoption of generative AI (genAI) on a quarterly basis, as part of the Real-Time Population Survey (RPS). RPS is designed and weighted to be nationally representative and to complement existing government surveys, such as the Current Population Survey and the American Community Survey, by carefully replicating core sections of those surveys while still leaving room for novel questions. The tracker will continue to be updated and expanded as new data from the quarterly RPS survey waves become available.
Read more about the methodology and additional findings in “The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI” by Alexander Bick, Adam Blandin, and David J. Deming, published in Management Science: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2025.02523. For more, read the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis On the Economy Blog.
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