Anthropic’s Economic Index links Claude Code use to higher autonomy

Usage data moves into labor-market evidence

Anthropic’s new Economic Index tweet is material because it turns Claude usage from product analytics into labor-market evidence. Posted on June 26, 2026 at 15:25:47 UTC, the tweet said Anthropic is advancing how it studies Claude’s economic impact through hourly sampling and survey data. FxTwitter showed about 551,000 views, 2,650 likes, and 356 reposts during collection, enough engagement for a research update from a major AI lab.

“Hourly sampling and survey data show us how the cadences of life shape usage.”

Anthropic’s account usually publishes Claude product changes, safety research, policy positions, and Economic Index work. The linked report, “Cadences,” expands the company’s earlier attempt to measure how AI is used at work. It classifies Claude conversations by artifacts, work or personal purpose, token consumption, autonomy, and user perceptions. The survey layer is important: Anthropic linked responses to usage data from mid-May to early June using privacy-preserving methods, then sampled up to 20 sessions per person and ended with about 9,700 respondents.

The strongest technical number is about autonomy. Anthropic rates AI autonomy on a 1-5 scale and finds Claude Code sessions show higher autonomy than chat or Cowork across 26 of 31 output types. Across all conversations, the average difference is 0.37 points. For scripts and code snippets, the gap is 0.53 points. The company also notes that Claude Code sessions use Opus far more often, but among Sonnet conversations the autonomy gap still remains at 0.26 points, suggesting the product surface matters, not only the model.

The labor signal is mixed rather than simplistic. More than a third of respondents expect responsibilities to change significantly in the next 12 months, and 10% rate losing their own job as likely or very likely. At the same time, heavier delegators report more optimism about future pay and job-finding ability, while 86% report speed gains, 82% scope gains, and 69% quality gains. What to watch next is whether Anthropic turns these measurements into product controls for delegation, review, and workplace governance. Source: Anthropic source tweet · Economic Index report