Workers Add AI Skills to Old LinkedIn Roles as DEI Tags Fade

Nearly one in five US workers has gone back to edit a job they already left on LinkedIn, and the most common addition since late 2022 is AI-related language, according to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The study, authored by Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom and researchers at Stanford and Revelio Labs, analyzed monthly snapshots of 29.4 million US LinkedIn profiles collected from August 2020 through January 2026.

Retroactive additions of terms like "AI," "GPT," "LLM," and "artificial intelligence" to past roles have risen more than sixfold since ChatGPT's release, the non-peer-reviewed paper said. The data came from labor-market firm Revelio Labs.

At the same time, workers became less likely to add remote-work language – "remote," "work from home," and "WFH" – to previous positions. By the end of 2025, additions and deletions of those terms were roughly balanced, a shift that tracked with a wave of return-to-office mandates.

The researchers also found a sharp drop in additions of DEI-related terms – "diversity," "equity," "inclusion," and "DEI" – starting in January 2025, coinciding with President Donald Trump's executive orders targeting those programs.

"Workers modify their résumé to reflect what they believe employers want to hear," the authors wrote.