Nearly 90,000 jobs tied to artificial intelligence were cut by companies through May 2026. Projections suggest up to 15 per cent of US roles could vanish over the next five years. Tech industry promises that new roles will appear do little to calm the anxiety of graduates wondering if anyone will be hiring them.
A different picture
A recent report from Ramp and Revelio Labs challenges this gloomy narrative. The study tracks enterprise AI spend and workforce records from nearly 22,000 companies.
Companies spending heavily on AI are growing their headcount faster, even in entry-level roles many fear are doomed. According to the report, “high-intensity adopters” — firms that spend on average $30 per employee per month on AI in the first three months — saw headcount increase 10.2 per cent.
Headcount also rose across functions, including engineering, sales, administration, customer service, finance, marketing, and scientist roles. The strongest job growth among high-intensity adopters was in the information sector, which includes software, internet, media, and tech-adjacent firms.
Limitations of the data
Despite these positive signals, the data skews heavily towards tech-forward, knowledge-work firms. These are companies that might have VC backing and are growing fast anyway, making it difficult to say whether AI is contributing to the hiring or just showing up at companies that are expanding regardless.
“This paper does not show that AI universally creates jobs,” the paper’s authors admit, “but it does counter claims that AI will lead to 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 per month over the past year, with Gen Z and entry level workers taking the brunt of the burden. But in tech-forward firms, the report finds that entry-level headcount actually rose by 12 per cent.
What it means
Perhaps the main takeaway is that AI is not always a tool for replacing labour, but can be a tool for firm expansion instead.
“For software and technology firms, AI can make core output cheaper or faster to produce: writing code, debugging, building 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 whole firm, not just the engineering team.”
But companies that buy subscriptions and run pilots, yet did not go on to make sustained investments, do not tend to see any gains in headcount, per the report.
That sets up the potential for a widening gap between firms that have the resources — like capital, technical staff, founder networks, and management bandwidth — to turn AI adoption into actual business gains and those that are stuck experimenting with subscriptions. In other words, this report suggests that firms that already have the resources are the ones who will see the largest gains.
The paper’s authors speculate such a divide may continue to grow, saying: “Firms without those channels may fall behind.”
