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

From tech to airways, massive world corporations have been slashing employees because the real-world affect of synthetic intelligence performs out, spooking staff. However critics say AI has grow to be a simple excuse for corporations trying to downsize.

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

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

Language-learning platform Duolingo has said that it’s going to step by step stop relying 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 perhaps 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 resembling layoffs.

“I am actually skeptical whether or not the layoffs that we see at the moment are actually as a consequence of true effectivity positive factors. It is quite 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 primarily place themselves on the frontier of AI know-how to look progressive and aggressive, and concurrently conceal the actual causes for layoffs, in keeping with Stephany.

“There is perhaps 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 properly,” 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 those 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’ll 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 well-liked LinkedIn post that AI adoption is at a “a lot slower tempo” than is being claimed and in massive firms “there’s not a lot occurring” with AI tasks even being rolled again as a consequence of price or safety considerations.

“On the identical time there are bulletins of massive layoff plans ‘due to AI.’ It seems 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 recommend,” mentioned Bouglé, who co-founded Genuine.ly.

Jasmine Escalera, a careers knowledgeable, mentioned this concealment is “feeding the worry 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 corporations usually are not being sincere, open and communicative about how they’re implementing AI,” Escalera instructed 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 determination 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 help circumstances and eradicated the necessity to “backfill help engineer roles,” they mentioned.

“We have efficiently redeployed lots of of staff 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 comments 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 workforce to 1 “success workforce,” with many then leaving by pure attrition in addition to the discount of the corporate’s buyer success workforce.

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 Funds 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 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 staff 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 research 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 mentioned they had been utilizing AI this 12 months, up from 25% final 12 months, whereas manufacturing corporations noticed an analogous bounce from 16% final 12 months to 26% this 12 months, however only a few had been utilizing AI to layoff staff.

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

Against this, 35% of providers corporations have used AI to retrain staff and 11% have employed extra because of this.

Stephany mentioned there is not a lot proof from his analysis that reveals massive ranges of technological unemployment as a consequence of AI.

“Economists name this structural unemployment, so the pie of labor just isn’t large enough for everyone anymore and so folks will lose jobs positively due to of AI, I do not assume that that is occurring on a mass scale,” he mentioned.

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 had been anxious about this and all the time the opposite occurred. The machine made corporations, industries extra productive.

“It allowed for the emergence of totally new jobs. If you consider the web 20 years in the past, no person 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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