Is AI Really Taking Jobs? Or Are Employers Just 'AI-Washing' Normal Layoffs?
7 65The New York Times lists other reasons a company lays off people. ("It didn't meet financial targets. It overhired. Tariffs, or the loss of a big client, rocked it...")
"But lately, many companies are highlighting a new factor: artificial intelligence. Executives, saying they anticipate huge changes from the technology, are making cuts now." A.I. was cited in the announcements of more than 50,000 layoffs in 2025, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a research firm... Investors may applaud such pre-emptive moves. But some skeptics (including media outlets) suggest that corporations are disingenuously blaming A.I. for layoffs, or "A.I.-washing." As the market research firm Forrester put it in a January report: "Many companies announcing A.I.-related layoffs do not have mature, vetted A.I. applications ready to fill those roles, highlighting a trend of 'A.I.-washing' — attributing financially motivated cuts to future A.I. implementation...."
"Companies are saying that 'we're anticipating that we're going to introduce A.I. that will take over these jobs.' But it hasn't happened yet. So that's one reason to be skeptical," said Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School... Of course, A.I. may well end up transforming the job market, in tech and beyond. But a recent study... [by a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies A.I. and work] found that AI has not yet meaningfully shifted the overall market. Tech firms have cut more than 700,000 employees globally since 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks industry job losses. But much of that was a correction for overhiring during the pandemic.
As unpopular as A.I. job cuts may be to the public, they may be less controversial than other reasons — like bad company planning.
Amazon CEO Jassy has even said the reason for most of their layoffs was reducing bureaucracy, the article points out, although "Most analysts, however, believe Amazon is cutting jobs to clear money for A.I. investments, such as data centers."
7 comments
It's not a correction (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Iamthecheese ( 1264298 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @07:36AM (#65963976)
This isn't a market correction from the pandemic. It's not AI. This is a severe recession, combined with inflation and it was planned as part of a huge transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the already wealthy.
Re:It's not a correction (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @12:43PM (#65964426)
Your concept of an "unjustified layoff" is, economically speaking, backwards.
Every job costs money, and therefore, paying that money is what requires justification. If the business no longer needs that job done, then keeping the employee on staff is wasting money. How much money the company is making has no bearing on whether or not any given job is justified.
This conversation changes if the labor force is organized by a union that imposes rules intended to protect employee jobs and income against economic conditions that might make them irrelevant. There may also be laws around "right to work" or protected classes that could complicate the matter, and make some layoffs illegal.
But "they make enough money to afford my salary" does not entitle one to a job. Instead "they need my skills" earns one a job.
Re:I think both bust mostaly just to hide other sh (Score: 5, Informative)
by rickb928 ( 945187 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @09:25AM (#65964060)
"That is why our constituion says that the negro shall be count as 5/9s a person."
The instruments are called 'amendments'. They are used to modify our Constitution for various purposes, to remedy errors in the original, to adapt to current conditions, correct injustices, for instance. Our Constitution is remarkable for this process. To claim it any longer requires that 'the Negro' be counted as less than a person is not merely inaccurate, it is untruthful. A lie.
The wise change their minds when the facts change, or conditions warrant re-examination of their previous beliefs. The fool clings to the discredited.
Now, re-read my sig as you consider your responses. And remember, mod points are not merely ephemeral, they are cheap.
ps - what is a 'sever recession'? A split of the economy? That works better than I thought at first...
Next quarter profits (Score: 5, Informative)
by BadDreamer ( 196188 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @08:13AM (#65964010)
Several companies, like Microsoft, have set bizarre profit goals and divisions are doing everything they can to meet them. The Xbox division (which handles all gaming for Microsoft) has a 30% profit target, for example, which means they are both squeezing customers extremely hard with price increases, and shutting down development of games and franchises expected to do well in the long term in order to cut short term costs.
They're (probably) the most extreme, but this is hitting everyone with the crazy way the market has rewarded "AI firms", and with how everyone wants in on that - both the valuation and the potential slashing of personnel costs. And seeing the "AI firms" stocks race away makes a lot of C level execs very nervous, meaning they want to reverse their own trends, meaning they use these methods as well to make a more palatable next quarter.
Of course, that valuation of "AI firms" which is propping up the markets is currently made from a slice of blue sky. There is no real value add justifying that price tag, other than in a few narrow fields. Meta, for example, use it to great effect to target and create ads much cheaper than human analysts and designers do it, and with a slightly better hit rate since statistics is one thing these tools do rather well. But apart from cases like that, it's a problem looking for a high value solution.
So yeah. AI is used as an excuse. Stock valuations are overall completely bonkers high, and there is no way companies can perform as expected from those valuations. And that makes the people whos skin is in that game nervous, so they place the skin of the employees in the game to soften their own blow.
This question (Score: 5, Insightful)
by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @08:38AM (#65964024)
This question is stupid.
The answer is yes and yes. We know this. Clearly some jobs producing low-rent copy of all kinds are being replaced with AI, instead of 6 people with photoshop creating images of an acceptably diverse cast of people seemly experiencing something akin to the afterglow of great sex while using your widget, one person can now make all the images you need for the marketing glossies, user manuals, and training slide decks alike. Now they write some prompts, make sure AI did not insert a competitors widget or add some 11th figures to anyone and done.
Ditto for a lot textual work. Here take these manual for version 2025, replace the specs an name for our very similar 2026 edition. Ok good now I have mostly ready to go document mostly free typographical and copy/edit problems and a human can quickly go in and make an functional changes required. Again one two people can do in a day what would have take a team of four two days.
As is always the case two things will happen. The organization will redeploy the freed-ed resources to do activities not considered profitable enough before, ie we did not produce French language materials for marketing our Canada edition in Quebec, Alberta was always the main audience but hey now that we can translate documentation cheaply maybe... The other thing companies will do is yes lay off folks they don't need. Which just leads to the next questions is the economy robust enough that new activity in other firms, start ups, or opportunities for soul proprietors is able to absorb them and can their current skills apply?
Honestly there is not deeper analysis to be done here because until the rubber meats the road and we have unemployment, wage growth, start up formation, etc numbers in the rear view nobody knows. That same hypothetical that decided to make French language documents might give up by the end of the year when it turns out their just isnt a market in Quebec for self-sealing-stem-bolts or having native language documentation and ad copy wasnt the barrier to new orders. Now they lay off the extra copy team members. On the flip side the companies that chose the lay off route might see their competitors taking share and do an about face as they realize their block buster EBIT-A numbers for FY25 having cut 20% of their staffing costs, are going to translate into a disastrous FY26 because their competitor is making a better product, offering better customer experience, and generally out performing and clients see it.
It is to early to speculate intelligently. It would be like asking what the PC meant for the economy in 1980.. Some uses and business cases were obviously but if i'd ask you then do think one of the biggest factors for success for a chain restaurant would be how quickly they can perform credit reconciliations and get money on deposit, I think most people would have said they still think the food being good was more important.
Employees are not blind. (Score: 5, Insightful)
by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @10:25AM (#65964132)
Any excuse is used to cover for layoffs. The truth is, for a profitable enterprise, reducing the headcount by removing unnecessary employees is always proper and justified, unless your profit relies on excess employment.
And when companies are posting record profits AND laying off people in droves?
See, this is the problem right now. The meatsacks being let go are not fucking stupid. Hell, a lot of them are invested in their own damn companies via stocks, with stock tickers being standard default apps on the phones we give 10-year olds. So yeah, they are rather aware of company performance. Especially hearing all the executives give each other high-fives and cheers during the EOY bonus meeting. The same executives laying off a month later.
When you're laying off in droves and posting healthy profits, that's not justification. That's just fucking Greed.
Vibe Hiring + Trust Me Bro Productivity (Score: 5, Interesting)
by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Monday February 02, 2026 @01:13PM (#65964510)
There are 2 major factors: Vibe Hiring and pure bullshit. The pure bullshit is the AI washing, like Marc Beinhoff of Salesforce does. Instead of saying we're facing economic headwinds and correcting for past overhiring as well as making our company more nimble and restructuring to eliminate unprofitable failed bets from before....they outright lie and say "AI BABY!!!!! We're all in! Contact our sales rep and we'll hook you up!!!" So all the big tech companies announcing layoffs due to AI. They're completely full of shit.
Why do I say that? In the history of technology, no one has ever said "I want to do the same business I do today or less, but for lower cost." That's not how publicly traded companies work. When they have productivity enhancing technology, they don't look to cut costs, they look to double output and crush their rivals. Additionally, if this shit worked as well as possible, we'd see all sorts of effects and side effects. Their release cadence would double. They'd release new products...it's basically free to write an app now, so why not write a whole suite? There would be amazing AI-driven patches where they optimized code to unseen levels, because tedious and risky optimizations they deprioritized now can be done for nearly free.
Working AI would deliver A LOT more than layoffs...an unimaginable flood of new software, updates, and optimizations. Additionally, nimble startups would emerge and create new markets and take over existing ones, like we saw with the dot-com and smart phone revolution. Right now people are only selling picks and shovels, not gold from this AI gold rush.
The second concern is vibe hiring. Pre-AI, you wanted to hire the engineers you need next year in order to get them ramped up with your business. They're not day laborers you can pick up from Home Depot and plop on a project and have them be productive immediately. It's not like electricians where everything is standardized. Most companies have highly specialized domain knowledge and processes. For our company, it typically takes a skilled engineer a year to be a good contributor.
So if you don't use AI daily like I do, you're being told by the wealthiest men in the world you won't need extra capacity. Do you hire?...or do you wait a bit? You'd look really stupid to expand your team by 20% this year and then shrink it by 22% in 2 years because AI made you not need them. That's not how managers get promoted.