THE HALFAX HEIMDALL AUGUR

AI mass layoffs 2026 and why companies are cutting jobs MONEY Artificial Intelligence Add Topic Doomsday scenario or reality? Mass layoffs fuel fear of AI Armageddon Jessica Guynn USA TODAY Feb. 26, 2026 Updated Feb. 27, 2026, 3:55 p.m. ET Hear this story A doomsday scenario from a small research firm this week warned that artificial intelligence tools may lead to a sharp rise in unemployment . The report from Citrini Research circulated widely on social media, unnerving investors by imagining what would happen if AI continues to upend white-collar work from well-heeled professionals missing mortgage payments to being forced to find work as Uber drivers. While the researchers called the report a "scenario, not a prediction" and analysts pushed back against it, the research got a second wind Thursday, Feb. 26, when Square and Cash App operator Block said it would slash nearly half its workforce — more than 4,000 employees — as AI reshapes its business. The mass layoffs signal how the rapidly developing technology is displacing workers in some parts of the economy, likely fueling fears that AI is coming for more American jobs . In a post on X, Jack Dorsey said his payments company c…

AI-washing and the massive layoffs hitting the economy - CNBC In this article Corporate America is getting rocked by historic rounds ofwhite-collar layoffs, leading some to wonder: Has AI finally come for their jobs? While the proliferation of generative and agentic artificial intelligence is playing a role, recent job cut announcements from companies likeAmazon,UPSandTargetare about a lot more than just the advance of new technology. The firms, which each announced layoffs in recent weeks totaling more than 60,000 roles eliminated this year, said they're trying to cut corporate bloat, streamline operations and adjust to new business models. But in the absence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly jobs report, which hasgone darkamid the government shutdown, the layoff announcements have raised questions about the strength of the labor market and if it's the start of an AI-driven, white-collar recession. Some companies have outright said they're replacing workers with AI.KlarnaCEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in May the company was able toshrink its head countby about 40%, in part because of AI.Duolingosaid in April it'll stop using contractors for work that AI can handle…

Where's The Evidence That AI Increases Productivity? - Slashdot 180801478 story IT productivity researcher Erik Brynjolfsson writes in the Financial Times that he's finally found evidence AI is impacting America's economy . This week America's Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a 403,000 drop in 2025's payroll growth — while real GDP "remained robust, including a 3.7% growth rate in the fourth quarter." This decoupling — maintaining high output with significantly lower labour input — is the hallmark of productivity growth. My own updated analysis suggests a US productivity increase of roughly 2.7% for 2025. This is a near doubling from the sluggish 1.4% annual average that characterised the past decade... The updated 2025 US data suggests we are now transitioning out of this investment phase into a harvest phase where those earlier efforts begin to manifest as measurable output. Micro-level evidence further supports this structural shift. In our work on the employment effects of AI last year, Bharat Chandar, Ruyu Chen and I identified a cooling in entry-level hiring within AI-exposed sectors, where recruitment for junior roles declined by roughly 16% while those who used AI…

AI and the Future of Workforce Training | Center for Security and ... Matthias Oschinski, Ali Crawford, and Maggie Wu The emergence of artificial intelligence as a general-purpose technology could profoundly transform work across industries, potentially affecting a variety of occupations. While previous technological shifts largely enhanced productivity and wages for white-collar workers but led to displacement pressures for blue-collar workers, AI may significantly disrupt both groups. This report examines the changing landscape of workforce development, highlighting the crucial role of community colleges, alternative career pathways, and AI-enabled training solutions in preparing workers for this transition. The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) as a general-purpose technology is poised to transform work across a variety of industries and job roles. Previous waves of technological change mainly led to job displacement and wage pressures for bluecollar workers while enhancing productivity and wages for white-collar workers. In contrast, AI’s impact could be more pervasive across all occupational categories, including knowledge workers and those with advanced education…

Upskilling The Global Workforce For AI - Forbes Innovation Upskilling The Global Workforce For AI By Guy Diedrich , Forbes Councils Member. for Forbes Technology Council COUNCIL POST Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based) Jan 22, 2025, 09:15am EST Guy Diedrich, Senior Vice President and Global Innovation Officer at Cisco . getty As the global workforce adapts to the rapid pace of technological change, industry has reached a pivotal moment: The skills required for success in today's job market are evolving faster than ever. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are driving this transformation and creating new opportunities while deepening the skills gap many workers face. Organizations must prepare their workforces for an AI-driven future in order to realize economic growth, social equity and technological innovation. Unprepared workforces could result in economic wage gaps, trade imbalances, technological stagnation, social issues and national security threats. The opportunity to bridge this gap by transforming skilling and upskilling efforts is now here as the workforce prepares for t…

The future of learning: Essential skills for the AI-driven workplace Graham Anthony//July 29, 2025// (Depositphotos) The future of learning: Essential skills for the AI-driven workplace (Depositphotos) Graham Anthony//July 29, 2025// Key takeaways:• AI adoption is accelerating across industries, creating new workforce demands.•Data literacy,critical thinkingandsoft skillsare essential for success.• Business leaders must evolve roles and manage change alongside AI.• Continuing education is key to bridging the skills gap for new graduates. Theartificial intelligencerevolution is not coming; it’s already here. As organizations across various industries integrate AI technologies into their core operations, we face an unprecedented shift in the skills landscape. While AI automates routine tasks and processes vast amounts of data with remarkable efficiency, it simultaneously creates new demands for human capabilities that complement rather than compete with machine intelligence. This transformation presents a significant challenge: both existing business leaders and new graduates find themselves navigating a skills gap that traditional education systems have not adequately addres…

An OpenAI cofounder ‘vibe coded’ an analysis of the U.S ... Andrej Karpathy used AI to gauge which U.S. professions are most vulnerable to the technology amid growing fears that a jobs apocalypse may be headed for the economy. Recommended Video Over the weekend, the OpenAI cofounder and former director of AI at Tesla posted a graphic showing how susceptible every occupation is to Al and automation, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Different jobs received scores on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being most exposed. While the overall weighted exposure was 4.9, Karpathy’s data also showed that professions earning more than $100,000 a year had the worst average score (6.7), while the those earning less than $35,000 had the lowest exposure (3.4). His chart quickly drew attention online, with many predicting doom for white-collar workers. But Karpathy soon removed the data. “This was a saturday morning 2 hour vibe coded project inspired by a book I’m reading,” he explained on X on Sunday morning. “I thought the code/data might be helpful to others to explore the BLS dataset visually, or color it in different ways or with different prompts or add their own visualizations. It’s been wi…

Deutsche Bank exec on AI & jobs: Slightly skewed by what economic history tells us Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank sees AI boosting productivity significantly over time. He believes historical innovation shows technology ultimately creates more jobs. Businesses will need years to fully integrate AI for maximum benefits. Investors are watching AI infrastructure spending and semiconductor stock performance. Reid acknowledges potential market risks but points to long-term human innovation.

Bill Gates says only these four jobs are safe from AI takeover Bill Gates. Credit / Shutterstock With artificial intelligence threatening to upend millions of jobs, Bill Gates has identified three careers he believes will survive the AI revolution – and now, experts say a fourth deserves a place on the list. For years, Bill Gates has warned that artificial intelligence (AI) won’t simply change the way people work; it could fundamentally reshape the workforce itself. Speaking on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon , Gates pointed out that what we currently consider valuable human expertise – whether it’s a “great doctor” or a “great teacher” – still matters because it’s “rare.” But “with AI, over the next decade, that will become free, commonplace – great medical advice, great tutoring,” he told Fallon . In other words, if AI replaces humans “for most things,” the very idea of expertise could shift into something widely available, instantly accessible, and no longer tied to a single human professional. But, “there will be some things we reserve for ourselves,” Gates said, adding people will never see machines playing baseball. “But in terms of making things and moving things and gro…

Companies backtrack after going all in on AI | Information Age | ACS Companies backtrack after going all in on AI Now in the process of rehiring staff. By Denham Sadler on May 26 2025 03:16 PM Print article Turns out humans want to talk to other humans, not AI bots. Photo: Shutterstock A number of large tech firms are backtracking after going all-in on AI and rehiring staff that were let go to save money. The recent rise of generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT led to many tech firms adopting an AI-first approach and either implementing hiring freezes or cutting staff and replacing them with automation. But some are now realising that these AI tools cannot complete particular tasks as effectively as humans and are rehiring staff in certain areas. In recent weeks, Swedish fintech Klarna rehired some human customer service staff after initially replacing these workers with AI chatbots, while tech giant IBM has begun bringing staff back on after replacing most of its HR division with AI. A human touch Two years ago, Klarna implemented a hiring freeze and began to replace its human staff with AI. By 2024 its total headcount had fallen from 3,800 to 2,000. But Klarna…

The AI boom hasn't stopped U.S. companies from hiring ... - Fortune In September 2025, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the company slashed 4,000 customer service roles , opting for the remaining 5,000 support workers to share their roles with AI agents. Recommended Video “I need less heads,” Benioff said at the time. But as more companies adopt agentic AI in hopes of replacing or making human workers more efficient, one top economist has noted that customer service roles—particularly those overseas—are only growing. Citing data from the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines, Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok noted in a recent blog post that from 2016 through 2025, call center employment in the Philippines has risen each year, nearly doubling to 2 million over the 10-year span. He also found that from 2021 to March 2026, unemployment rates in the Philippines have decreased from 9% to about 4% , suggesting AI has not displaced offshore workers. In India, unemployment has remained steady at around 7%. The Philippines dethroned India as the largest call center employer about 15 years ago. Offshore call center jobs began booming in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a …

AI will change the nature of jobs, create new ones: Citi CEO after tech layoffs Citi CEO Jane Fraser revealed the bank is navigating two major AI races: integrating the technology into business models for revenue growth and adapting to its impact on jobs. While acknowledging job dislocations and changes in job nature, Fraser highlighted AI's potential to augment human capabilities. Citigroup recently laid off 3,500 tech roles in China as part of a broader global workforce reduction aimed at streamlining operations and boosting profitability.

The bubble risk in AI investment boom - Chinadaily.com.cn Investment in artificial intelligence will continue its meteoric rise in 2025, powered by a narrative that AI is not just a tool but a new workforce. As Jensen Huang of NVIDIA recently put it, the software industry of the past was about creating tools like Excel, Word and web browsers, "tools… only so large" because humans had to operate them. By contrast, "AI is not a tool. AI is, in fact, workers that can actually use tools." Imagine AI systems as digital colleagues who write code in VS Code, plan trips through browsers or act as invisible chauffeurs in robotaxis. This framing has justified capital expenditures on a scale usually reserved for national infrastructure. But before we accept this narrative, it is worth revisiting the deeper historical and economic forces at play. The distinction between a tool and a worker is not merely philosophical. It underpins the assumptions that drive trillion-dollar forecasts and the fears of a potential valuation bubble. The modern tech industry's enthusiasm rests on this "AI is work" thesis: that AI systems will increasingly perform tasks in place of humans, not just support them. …

ByTOM LEONARD, US CORRESPONDENT Published:18:07 EDT, 7 July 2026|Updated:18:25 EDT, 7 July 2026 4 Viewcomments 'Artificial intelligenceis a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it,' said senior Ford executive Charles Poon. 'Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing AI and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product.' The embarrassing volte-face comes just a year after Ford's chief executive, Jim Farley, criticised the quality of America's blue-collar workers and predicted that AI 'will leave a lot of white-collar people behind' and replace 'literally half' of all jobs in the US. And Ford is far from alone in having to rehire the employees they laid off in favour of AI, as executives across the business world discover that humans can't be replaced by machines quite so easily after all. This so-called 'AI boomerang' phenomenon can be seen in a 2025 report from the global market research company Forrester Research, which revealed that 55 per cent of employers regretted their decision to get rid of staff because of AI. Orgvue, a British software company, found the same percentage of interna…

Goldman Sachs economist on millions losing jobs to AI: They won’t be permanently wiped out Goldman Sachs economist Joseph Briggs forecasts AI could displace 9% of the US workforce, around 15 million jobs, drawing parallels to past tech disruptions. While acknowledging job losses in sectors like tech and consulting, he emphasizes history shows technology creates more new roles than it destroys. MIT's Neil Thompson suggests AI adoption will be gradual, with partial automation being more common than outright job elimination.

AI is changing who gets hired in America's economy - CNBC In this article From the Dayton, Ohio, suburbs to boardrooms in Dallas, the employees fuelingAT&T'snext wave of growth aren't fresh-faced college graduates with expensive four-year degrees. They're skilled, blue-collar workers ready to get their hands dirty — and AT&T can't find enough of them. "We need people who know how to actually work with electricity. We need people who understand photonics. We need people who can go into folks' homes and connect this infrastructure to make it work right," AT&T CEO John Stankey told CNBC during a recent interview from the company's Dallas headquarters. "We find that we've got to go out and find them, train them, and incent them to come in," he said. "It's not like we're growing them on trees in the United States." AT&T's dilemma — huntingfor blue-collar workers at a time when a record number of college students areprojected to graduate this spring— underscores thepalpable crisisfacing new degree holders as the first wave of the AI revolutionhits the U.S. economy. For much of the postwar era, the American bargain was clear: Go to college, get a degree and claim your place in the m…