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

From tech to airways, giant international corporations have been slashing workers because the real-world affect of synthetic intelligence performs out, spooking workers. However critics say AI has develop into a simple excuse for corporations 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 help roles in September, saying that AI can do 50% of the work on the firm. In the meantime, fintech agency Klarna has lowered workers by 40% because it aggressively adopts AI instruments.

Language-learning platform Duolingo has said 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 may be extra to job cuts than meets the attention.

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

“I am actually skeptical whether or not the layoffs that we see at present are actually attributable to true effectivity positive aspects. It is moderately actually a projection into AI within the sense of ‘We are able to use AI to make good excuses,'” Stephany stated in an interview with CNBC.

Corporations can primarily place themselves on the frontier of AI know-how to look modern and aggressive, and concurrently conceal the actual causes for layoffs, in response to Stephany.

“There may be numerous different explanation why corporations are having to do away with 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 corporations that flourished throughout the pandemic “considerably overhired” and the current layoffs may 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 preferred LinkedIn publish that AI adoption is at a “a lot slower tempo” than is being claimed and in giant companies “there’s not a lot taking place” with AI initiatives even being rolled again attributable to value or safety considerations.

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

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

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

Escalera stated huge corporations should be extra accountable as they set the tone for what is the norm in enterprise choice making and keep away from greenlighting “dangerous habits.”

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

“We have efficiently redeployed a whole lot of workers into different areas like skilled providers, gross sales, and buyer success,” the Salesforce spokesperson added.

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 folks in two years however “AI is just 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 Price range Lab, a non-partisan coverage analysis middle at Yale College, launched a report on Wednesday which confirmed that U.S. labor has truly been little disrupted by AI automation for the reason that 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 corporations “don’t level to important reductions in employment” throughout the providers and manufacturing business within the New York–Northern New Jersey area.

It discovered that 40% of service corporations stated they have been utilizing AI this 12 months, up from 25% final 12 months, whereas manufacturing corporations noticed the same leap from 16% final 12 months to 26% this 12 months, however only a few have been utilizing AI to layoff employees.

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

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

Stephany stated there is not a lot proof from his analysis that exhibits giant ranges of technological unemployment attributable to AI.

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

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

“It reoccurred this century alone a dozen occasions, you possibly can return to historic occasions the place Roman emperors put maintain to sure machines as a result of they have been apprehensive about this and all the time the opposite occurred. The machine made corporations, industries extra productive.

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

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