Companies are blaming AI for job cuts. Critics say it’s a ‘good excuse’

From tech to airways, giant international firms have been slashing employees because the real-world affect of synthetic intelligence performs out, spooking staff. However critics say AI has change into a straightforward excuse for companies seeking to downsize.

Final month, tech consultancy agency Accenture introduced a restructuring plan that features fast exits for employees that are not first capable of reskill on AI. Days later, Lufthansa stated it was going to remove 4,000 jobs by 2030 because it leans on AI to extend effectivity.

Salesforce additionally laid off 4,000 buyer assist roles in September, saying that AI can do 50% of the work on the firm. In the meantime, fintech agency Klarna has lowered employees by 40% because it aggressively adopts AI instruments.

Language-learning platform Duolingo has acknowledged that it’ll steadily cease counting on contractors and use AI to fill the gaps.

The headlines are grim, however Fabian Stephany, assistant professor of AI and work on the Oxford Web Institute, stated there is perhaps extra to job cuts than meets the attention.

Beforehand there might have been some stigma connected to utilizing AI, however now firms are “scapegoating” the know-how to take the autumn for difficult enterprise strikes comparable to layoffs.

“I am actually skeptical whether or not the layoffs that we see at the moment are actually on account of true effectivity features. It is somewhat actually a projection into AI within the sense of ‘We will use AI to make good excuses,'” Stephany stated in an interview with CNBC.

Firms can primarily place themselves on the frontier of AI know-how to look revolutionary and aggressive, and concurrently conceal the true causes for layoffs, in line with Stephany.

“There is perhaps varied different explanation why firms are having to eliminate a part of their workforce … Duolingo or Klarna are actually prime candidates for this as a result of there was overhiring throughout Corona [Covid-19 pandemic] as properly,” the professor stated.

Some firms that flourished in the course of the pandemic “considerably overhired” and the latest layoffs would possibly simply be a “market clearance.”

“It is to some extent firing those who for whom there had not been a sustainable long run perspective and as an alternative of claiming “we miscalculated this two, three years in the past, they will now come to the scapegoating, and that’s saying ‘it is due to AI although,'” he added.

This sample has sparked dialog on-line. One founder, Jean-Christophe Bouglé even stated in a well-liked LinkedIn submit that AI adoption is at a “a lot slower tempo” than is being claimed and in giant companies “there’s not a lot occurring” with AI initiatives even being rolled again on account of price or safety considerations.

“On the identical time there are bulletins of huge layoff plans ‘due to AI.’ It appears like a giant excuse, in a context the place the financial system in lots of nations is slowing down, regardless of what the unbelievable efficiency of inventory exchanges recommend,” stated Bouglé, who co-founded Genuine.ly.

Jasmine Escalera, a careers skilled, stated this concealment is “feeding the concern of AI” with staff globally involved about their jobs being changed because of AI.

“So we already know that staff are scared as a result of firms should not being trustworthy, open and communicative about how they’re implementing AI,” Escalera informed CNBC Make It. “Now firms are overtly stating ‘We’re doing this [layoffs] due to AI’ so it is feeding the frenzy.”

Escalera stated large firms have to be extra accountable as they set the tone for what is the norm in enterprise resolution making and keep away from greenlighting “unhealthy habits.”

A Salesforce spokesperson clarified to CNBC that the corporate deployed its personal AI agent, Agentforce, which lowered the variety of buyer assist instances and eradicated the necessity to “backfill assist engineer roles,” they stated.

Klarna directed CNBC to its co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s feedback on X the place he defined that the corporate shrank its workforce from 5,500 to three,000 individuals in two years however “AI is simply a part of that story.”

Siemiatkowski linked the workforce discount to slimming down its analytics staff to 1 “success staff,” with many then leaving by pure attrition in addition to the discount of the corporate’s buyer success staff.

Lufthansa and Accenture declined to touch upon the matter and didn’t share any additional particulars on their AI restructuring technique. Duolingo didn’t reply to CNBC’s request for remark.

The Finances Lab, a non-partisan coverage analysis middle at Yale College, launched a report on Wednesday which confirmed that U.S. labor has really been little disrupted by AI automation because the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.

The lab examined U.S. labor market knowledge from November 2022 to July 2025 utilizing a “dissimilarity index” which measured how a lot the occupational combine—the share of employees in several jobs—has shifted since AI’s debut and in contrast it to different technological shifts such because the introduction of computer systems and the web. It discovered that AI hasn’t but triggered widespread job losses.

Moreover, New York Fed economists launched analysis in early September which confirmed that AI use amongst companies “don’t level to vital reductions in employment” throughout the providers and manufacturing business within the New York–Northern New Jersey area.

It discovered that 40% of service companies stated they had been utilizing AI this yr, up from 25% final yr, whereas manufacturing companies noticed the same leap from 16% final yr to 26% this yr, however only a few had been utilizing AI to layoff employees.

Only one% of the providers agency reported AI as the rationale for shedding employees up to now six months, down from 10% that had laid off employees utilizing AI in 2024. In the meantime, 12% of providers companies stated AI made them rent much less employees in 2025.

In contrast, 35% of providers companies have used AI to retrain staff and 11% have employed extra in consequence.

Stephany stated there is not a lot proof from his analysis that reveals giant ranges of technological unemployment on account of AI.

“Economists name this structural unemployment, so the pie of labor will not be large enough for everyone anymore and so individuals will lose jobs positively due to of AI, I do not suppose that that is occurring on a mass scale,” he stated.

He added that considerations about know-how placing an finish to human work could be seen all through historical past.

“It reoccurred this century alone a dozen instances, you may return to historical instances the place Roman emperors put maintain to sure machines as a result of they had been anxious about this and all the time the opposite occurred. The machine made firms, industries extra productive.

“It allowed for the emergence of completely new jobs. If you consider the web 20 years in the past, no one would have recognized what a social media influencer is, what an app developer is as a result of it did not exist.”

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