Vic SolAI is in almost every company; measured productivity is not there yet
For anyone reporting AI's productivity effect to leadership who needs to set expectations before the next budget.
In 30 seconds
- A survey of nearly 9,000 CEOs, CFOs and senior executives in seven countries, including Mexico, finds that 78% of firms use AI, yet the reported contribution to productivity over the last three years is 0.2% a year.
- If your business case promises large productivity jumps within months, it runs against what executives themselves report.
- Measure against a baseline and keep usage and impact apart in your reporting.
The exhibit
| Last 3 years (reported) | 0.2% |
|---|---|
| Next 3 years (expected) | 0.6% |
NBER Working Paper 34836, "Firm Data on AI", Oct. 2026 revision. Nearly 9,000 executives in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, Mexico and South Africa; Summer 2026 survey. Annual labor productivity growth attributed to AI.
Fact
- 78% of surveyed firms use AI. 80% of executives use it regularly, averaging 2.1 hours a week, up from 1.5 hours in Winter 2026.
- US firms expect to spend $2,000 per employee on AI in 2026. Spending is highly concentrated: 2% of firms account for over half of it.
- Net effect of AI on employment over the last three years: essentially none. More than 40% of firms expect positive or negative effects that roughly cancel out.
- Productivity: executives attribute 0.2% annual growth to AI over the past three years and expect 0.6% a year over the next three.
My read
High adoption with low effect is not a contradiction. It is the gap between using a tool and changing how the work gets done. An executive using AI two hours a week does not redesign a process. For a manager, the practical lesson is about expectations: if the market expects 0.6% a year, promising 30% productivity in one quarter (an illustrative figure) leaves you exposed. It is easier to defend one concrete process, with its baseline, where the change can actually be measured.
What to do on Monday
- Before you promise productivity, define what you will compare against and with which data point from today. Sheet: baseline, compared to what?
- In your next report, split two columns: usage (how many people use it) and impact (which business metric moved). Sheet: hours vs. growth scorecard
- Check where your AI spend goes. If a few use cases take almost all of it, decide which to keep, adjust or switch off. Sheet: keep, adjust or switch off
What we don't know
- The figures are executives' perceptions, not productivity measured in financial statements or national accounts.
- It is a working paper without peer review; the October revision changed the sample and figures from the February version.
- The abstract does not break results out by country, so we don't know how far Mexico sits from the average.
Vic Sol · Decision Desk · vicsol.org/resources/ · Free to use with attribution. Independent summary of a public source; figures belong to their author. Not legal, financial or audit advice.