AI-related job loss fears grow every time one other company proclaims a round of layoffs. Through May of 2026, corporations announced that near 90,000 job cuts were tied to AI, and, by some accounts, as much as 15% of U.S. jobs are projected to be eliminated by AI over the following five years. Guarantees from the tech industry that AI may even create latest jobs does little to ease fears, especially for the generation wondering if anyone will likely be hiring after they graduate.
A recent report from Ramp and Revelio Labs, which track enterprise AI spend and workforce records from nearly 22,000 corporations, respectively, complicates that gloomy narrative.
The report found that corporations spending heavily on AI are growing headcount faster, even within the entry-level roles that many fear are doomed. Based on the report, “high-intensity adopters” — firms that spend on average $30 per worker monthly on AI in the primary three months — saw headcount increase 10.2%.
Headcount also rose across functions, including engineering, sales, administration, customer support, finance, marketing, and scientist roles. The strongest job growth amongst high-intensity adopters was in the knowledge sector, which incorporates software, web, media, and tech-adjacent firms.
Despite these positive signals, the information isn’t as rosy because it seems. It skews heavily towards tech-forward, knowledge-work firms — ones that might need VC-backing and are growing fast anyway, making it difficult to say whether AI is contributing to the hiring or simply showing up at corporations which can be expanding anyway.
“This paper doesn’t show that AI universally creates jobs,” the paper’s authors admit, “nevertheless it does counter claims that AI will result in broad job losses.”
It also counters claims that AI is killing all junior jobs. Recent research from Goldman Sachs found that AI has already erased about 16,000 net jobs monthly over the past yr, with Gen Z and entry level staff taking the brunt of the burden. But in tech-forward firms, the report finds that entry-level headcount actually rose by 12%.
So what can we take away from this? Perhaps that AI isn’t all the time a tool for labor substitution, but that it may be a tool for firm-expansion as a substitute.
“For software and technology firms, AI could make core output cheaper or faster to supply: writing code, debugging, constructing internal tools, producing technical documentation, and supporting product development,” the report reads. “Lower production costs in these workflows can raise the return to expanding the entire firm, not only the engineering team.”
But corporations that buy subscriptions and run pilots, yet didn’t go on to make sustained investments, don’t are likely to see any gains in headcount, per the report.
That sets up the potential for a widening gap between firms which have the resources — like capital, technical staff, founder networks, and management bandwidth — to show AI adoption into actual business gains and people which can be stuck experimenting with subscriptions. In other words, this report suggests that firms that have already got the resources are those who will see the biggest gains.
The paper’s authors speculate such a divide may proceed to grow, saying: “Firms without those channels may fall behind.”
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