What Is The Real Impact of AI on Job Cuts? An In-Depth Analysis

Ahmed Fessi
Towards Data Science
8 min readNov 6, 2023

AI Replacing Humans, Futuristic, Oil painting style — Generated by the Author using Dall-E 3

Since the release of ChatGPT and given the increasing adoption of Generative AI, many questions arose related to the impact on the job market related to AI.

Multiple companies announced job cuts as their teams adopt AI and hence “requiring less workforce”. No industry seems spared. No function seems spared.

Those announcements covered big companies like British Telecom, or smaller, like this French PR company replacing half of its staff by AI.

This obviously generated concerns related to job safety, as companies of different sizes, in different sectors, and within different functions seem to be massively replacing humans by AI.

These concerns reached even the Biden administration, and in the Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence signed by President Biden, it stated, quote, “Produce a report on AI’s potential labor-market impacts, and study and identify options for strengthening federal support for workers facing labor disruptions, including from AI”.

So, as a Data guy, I wanted to assess, with numbers and data, the real impact of AI on layoffs and job losses.

Methodology

Data Sources

Published in Towards Data Science

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Written by Ahmed Fessi

Author | FinTech Chief Information Officer | Data & Digital Leader | Enterprise Architect | https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmedfessi/

Responses (9)

What are your thoughts?

Looking ahead, the trend of AI-driven automation might escalate, potentially leading to more layoffs.

True

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It's really concerning situation with advanced tech many jobs will be get replaced

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The Total number of Layoffs : 6,841 employees were laid off from the companies listed (not considering the missing data points — see limitations).

I’m not going to lie, I am WORRIED about the impact of AI on the types of industries I have and do work for.

Some might call me a doomsayer, but I understand the panic it strikes in the heart of many.

Down with AI, up with humans!

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