From technology to aviation, major global enterprises have been cutting jobs as the actual repercussions of artificial intelligence emerge, alarming employees. Detractors argue that AI has turned into an effortless justification for companies aiming to reduce their workforce.
Last month, the tech consulting entity Accenture revealed a restructuring initiative that encompasses prompt departures for employees unable to reskill for AI. Shortly thereafter, Lufthansa announced its intention to cut 4,000 jobs by 2030 as it utilizes AI to enhance efficiency.
Salesforce also terminated 4,000 customer support positions in September, claiming that AI can undertake 50% of its operations. Concurrently, the fintech company Klarna has decreased its workforce by 40% as it actively integrates AI tools.
The language-learning service Duolingo announced its proposal to progressively cease its reliance on contractors and employ AI to fill the gaps.
The news is disheartening, but Fabian Stephany, assistant professor of AI and work at the Oxford Internet Institute, asserted that there could be more behind job reductions than initially perceived.
Once, a stigma may have surrounded AI, but firms are now “scapegoating” the technology for business decisions that include layoffs.
“I remain quite doubtful whether the layoffs we currently observe are genuinely due to actual efficiency improvements. It is more a projection into AI in the sense of ‘We can utilize AI to provide justifications,'” Stephany expressed in an interview with CNBC.
Companies can essentially position themselves at the forefront of AI advancements to seem innovative and competitive while simultaneously masking the underlying causes for layoffs, as noted by Stephany.
“There could be numerous additional reasons why businesses have to eliminate parts of their workforce … Duolingo or Klarna are prime examples of this since there was substantial overhiring during the pandemic as well,” the professor mentioned.
Several enterprises that prospered during the pandemic “significantly overexpanded” and the recent layoffs could merely represent a “market adjustment.”
“It’s somewhat about terminating workers for whom there hasn’t been a viable long-term outlook, and instead of admitting ‘we miscalculated this two or three years back,’ they can now proceed to scapegoat, claiming ‘it’s because of AI,'” he further remarked.
This trend has ignited discussions online. One entrepreneur, Jean-Christophe Bouglé, even remarked in a popular LinkedIn entry that AI adoption is progressing at a “much slower pace” than claimed and, in substantial corporations, “there’s not much occurring” with AI initiatives even being abandoned due to cost or security issues.
“Simultaneously, there are announcements of significant layoff strategies ‘due to AI.’ It appears to be a major excuse within a context where the economy in numerous nations is slowing down, despite the impressive performance of stock markets,” conveyed Bouglé, co-founder of Authentic.ly.
Fostering the apprehension of AI
Jasmine Escalera, a careers authority, stated that this concealment is “fueling the fear of AI,” as employees worldwide worry about their jobs being taken over by AI.
“We already know that workers are uneasy because companies lack honesty, transparency, and communication about their AI implementation,” Escalera told CNBC Make It. “Now organizations are openly declaring ‘We’re executing this [layoffs] because of AI’ thus inciting the frenzy.”
Escalera emphasized that large corporations must exercise greater accountability as they set the precedent for norms in corporate decision-making and refrain from endorsing “unethical behavior.”
A Salesforce spokesperson clarified to CNBC that the firm deployed its own AI agent, Agentforce, which diminished customer support cases and rendered the need to “backfill support engineer roles” unnecessary, they added.
“We have effectively redeployed numerous employees into other sectors such as professional services, sales, and customer success,” added the Salesforce spokesperson.
Klarna directed CNBC to its co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s remarks on X where he articulated that the firm had reduced its workforce from 5,500 to 3,000 individuals within two years but “AI constitutes merely a portion of that narrative.”
Siemiatkowski related the workforce shrinkage to downsizing its analytics team to one “success team,” with many departing through natural attrition and also from the downsizing of the company’s customer success team.
Lufthansa and Accenture both declined to provide a statement on the subject and did not disclose any more specifics regarding their AI restructuring plans. Duolingo has not responded to CNBC’s inquiry for comment.
Massive AI layoffs are not evident
The Budget Lab, a non-partisan policy research facility at Yale University, disclosed a report on Wednesday indicating that AI automation has indeed disrupted U.S. labor minimally since the debut of ChatGPT in 2022.
The lab scrutinized U.S. labor market statistics from November 2022 to July 2025 utilizing a “dissimilarity index” that measured how much the job distribution—the percentage of workers in various roles—has altered since the advent of AI and compared it with other technological transformations like the emergence of computers and the internet. It discovered that AI has not yet precipitated widespread job eliminations.
Moreover, economists from the New York Fed issued research in early September indicating that AI implementation among companies “does not suggest significant employment reductions” across the services and manufacturing sectors in the New York–Northern New Jersey area.
It indicated that 40% of service companies reported using AI this year, an increase from 25% last year, while manufacturing firms saw a similar rise from 16% last year to 26% this year, yet very few applied AI to lay off employees.
Only 1% of service firms indicated AI as the reason for layoffs in the last six months, a decline from 10% that had laid off staff employing AI in 2024. In contrast, 12% of service firms reported AI made them hire fewer employees in 2025.
Conversely, 35% of service companies have utilized AI to retrain employees, and 11% have increased hiring as a result.
Stephany stated there isn’t substantial evidence based on his findings indicating significant technological unemployment due to AI.
“Economists term this structural unemployment, whereby the available work isn’t sufficient for all, leading to job losses due to AI; however, I don’t think this is occurring on a large scale,” he asserted.
He added that concerns regarding technology replacing human labor have surfaced throughout history.
“This cycle has recurred within this century multiple times; one could even trace back to antiquity when Roman emperors imposed restrictions on certain machines due to their worries about this, and yet the opposite outcome occurred. Technology enhanced productivity and facilitated the rise of entirely new professions. Just think about two decades ago; terms like social media influencer or app developer didn’t exist because they were not yet present.”
Read more about companies engaging in AI-related layoffs below:
