AI gets blamed for Layoffs even as Studies show only Little Impact

In a lot of layoff announcements, AI shows up as the reason and the excuse at the same time. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently called out the trend, saying some firms are “AI washing” job cuts, blaming artificial intelligence for reductions they were going to make anyway.

More companies have leaned into that framing in public. Like Pinterest cut less than 15% of its workforce as it shifts more of its focus toward AI-related work. And Amazon has also cut thousands while talking up AI-driven efficiency. Challenger, Gray & Christmas put numbers on the label, counting 7,624 job cuts in January that employers attributed to AI and 54,836 AI-cited layoff plans across 2025.

Inside companies, the data sounds calmer. A National Bureau of Economic Research(NBER) survey of business managers across the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Australia found more than 90% estimate AI has had no impact on employment at their firms over the past three years. The same study found 89% reported no impact on labor productivity over that period, measured as sales per employee.

This gap is why the “AI did it” line works so well. AI is easy to point to in a memo because it feels inevitable and hard to argue with. But rolling it out deeply enough to change headcount is slower and harder to prove. Even Challenger’s own breakdown of January layoff reasons still shows familiar reasons ahead of AI, like contract loss, market and economic conditions, and restructuring.

The NBER results also suggest why the argument won’t go away. Managers expect more impact later, forecasting about a 1.4% productivity lift over the next three years, paired with a 0.7% drop in employment. That is not a sudden wipeout. It looks more like a squeeze with slower hiring, and more work pushed onto smaller teams. With this shift, “AI washing” stays believable, because the future it points to may still arrive, just not in the way the layoff memo implies today.