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

From tech to airways, giant international corporations have been slashing employees because the real-world affect of synthetic intelligence performs out, spooking workers. However critics say AI has turn into a straightforward excuse for companies trying 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 mentioned 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 decreased employees by 40% because it aggressively adopts AI instruments.

Language-learning platform Duolingo has acknowledged that it’s going to regularly 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, mentioned there is likely to be extra to job cuts than meets the attention.

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

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

Firms can basically place themselves on the frontier of AI know-how to seem modern and aggressive, and concurrently conceal the true causes for layoffs, in keeping with Stephany.

“There is likely to be varied different the reason why corporations 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 nicely,” the professor mentioned.

Some corporations that flourished throughout the pandemic “considerably overhired” and the current layoffs would possibly simply be a “market clearance.”

“It is to some extent firing folks that for whom there had not been a sustainable long run perspective and as a substitute 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 mentioned 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 occurring” with AI initiatives even being rolled again attributable to price or safety issues.

“On the identical time there are bulletins of massive layoff plans ‘due to AI.’ It seems like an enormous excuse, in a context the place the economic system in lots of nations is slowing down, regardless of what the unimaginable efficiency of inventory exchanges recommend,” mentioned Bouglé, who co-founded Genuine.ly.

Jasmine Escalera, a careers knowledgeable, mentioned this concealment is “feeding the worry 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 are usually not being sincere, open and communicative about how they’re implementing AI,” Escalera advised CNBC Make It. “Now corporations are brazenly stating ‘We’re doing this [layoffs] due to AI’ so it is feeding the frenzy.”

Escalera mentioned large corporations must 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 decreased the variety of buyer assist instances and eradicated the necessity to “backfill assist engineer roles,” they mentioned.

“We have efficiently redeployed tons of 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 barely a part of that story.”

Siemiatkowski linked the workforce discount to slimming down its analytics staff to at least one “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 heart at Yale College, launched a report on Wednesday which confirmed that U.S. labor has really 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 induced 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 trade within the New York–Northern New Jersey area.

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

Just one% of the providers agency reported AI as the explanation 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 mentioned AI made them rent much less employees in 2025.

In contrast, 35% of providers companies have used AI to retrain workers and 11% have employed extra because of this.

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

“Economists name this structural unemployment, so the pie of labor shouldn’t be sufficiently big for everyone anymore and so folks will lose jobs undoubtedly due to of AI, I do not suppose that that is occurring on a mass scale,” he mentioned.

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

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

“It allowed for the emergence of totally new jobs. If you concentrate on 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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