AI is changing work faster than the data can keep up
Sebastian Herrera
Sat, August 8, 2026 at 5:30 PM GMT+5:30
8 min read
No one can agree on whether AI is taking away jobs
Recent studies have shown AI having a positive impact on job growth and opportunities, yet large groups of economists, as well as labor activists, warn that the emerging technology threatens to quickly transform the financial system, and that action must be taken now
Tech companies, especially large ones, have continued to cull jobs during the AI boom. Microsoft laid off nearly 5,000 people in early July as it continues to pour billions into AI data centers. The layoffs added to earlier downsizing by the software giant and moves by companies that include Amazon and Oracle to shed thousands of people in the last two years
But whether AI is directly leading to job cuts has been difficult to measure, and the picture is blurred by corporate whiplash: CEOs blame AI for layoffs one month, then hail it as an engine for new job creation the next. Even recently, some of the largest companies, such as Google parent Alphabet, have reportedly told investorsthey plan to increase headcount
“There’s been discretion out there as to what extent the layoffs we have been observing are really driven by AI,” Till Von Wachter, a professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Fortune. “It’s been notoriously hard to pin that down.”
Some economists, such as Ben Zipperer from the Economic Policy Institute, said AI’s impact on jobs has so far been more limited than what some doomsday scenarios initially predicted.
The latest U.S. jobs report, which revealed that employers unexpectedly cut 23,000 jobs in July, as only added to the confusion
And some recent data has shown a bullish picture. A recent study by financial services firm Ramp of more than 21,000 U.S. firms found that companies that invested in AI grew their headcount. Ramp categorized its heaviest AI spenders as “high-intensity” adopters. Over two years, these top spenders expanded their overall staff by 10% and boosted entry-level hiring by 12%, defying other reports that college graduates face a barren job market. By contrast, the bottom two-thirds of adopters saw no headcount growth at all.
Though the study found general AI adopters tended to be larger firms, the most intense adopters were smaller companies which might already be growing regardless of AI and are more open to experimentation. High-intensity companies were utilizing more advanced tools like coding agents or APIs (protocols that allow various applications to communicate)
The Ramp study has parallels to a recent report by researchers at Google that found AI so far is mostly being used as a collaborative tool rather than an outright job-replacer
