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AI Is Slowing Hiring in Exposed Sectors—But Not Causing a Broad Jobs Collapse
AI adoption is associated with slower hiring in the most automation exposed industries since late 2022, not broad job losses across developed economies. The hiring headwind is most visible in information and communication services, call centres, software publishing, management consulting and advertising; entry level...
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Key takeaways
- AI adoption is associated with slower hiring in the most automation exposed industries since late 2022, not broad job losses across developed economies.
- The hiring headwind is most visible in information and communication services, call centres, software publishing, management consulting and advertising; entry level workers appear more exposed than experienced workers.
- Across more than 800 occupations in the US, France and Canada, a 10% increase in AI exposure was associated with only a 0.1 percentage point reduction in annual headcount growth—an important sign that effects remain c...
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openai.comCreate a landscape editorial hero image for this Studio Global article: How is AI adoption—estimated at 15%–20% in France, the United States, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom and 10%–15% in major emerging. Article summary: AI adoption appears to be restraining hiring mainly in a narrow set of highly automation-exposed, service- and tech-intensive industries—not producing broad job losses across developed economies. The evidence is stronges. Topic tags: general, general web. Style: premium digital editorial illustration, source-backed research mood, clean composition, high detail, modern web publication hero. Use reference image context only for broad subject, composition, and topical grounding; do not copy the exact image. Avoid: logos, brand marks, copyrighted characters, real person likenesses, fake screenshots, UI text, readable text, watermarks, charts with fake numbers, click
AI use is becoming common enough to show up in hiring data, but the pattern is narrower than a headline about an AI-driven jobs collapse suggests. Goldman Sachs estimates adoption at roughly 15%–20% in major developed economies, with France, the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom at the high end, compared with 10%–15% in major emerging markets. Its analysis finds slower hiring in industries most exposed to AI automation since the second half of 2022—especially in Germany, Australia and the US. 10
The key distinction is between sector-specific hiring pressure and an economy-wide employment shock. The former is visible; the latter has not yet emerged in the data examined by Goldman.
Where AI-related hiring pressure is most visible
Information and communication services have seen employment growth slow in almost every major developed economy since 2022. In the US, employment in these industries has fallen below its long-run trend. In other developed economies, it has remained near or above trend. That makes the technology-sector hiring slowdown broadly international, while the strongest evidence of an outright negative employment effect is in the US. 10
The pattern is sharper in several more narrowly defined, automation-exposed industries:
- Call centres
- Software publishing
- Management consulting
- Advertising services
Employment in these sectors has fallen sharply below historical trend across developed economies, according to Goldman Sachs. 10
Call centres show the largest gap from trend
Call centres provide the clearest numerical example of the shift. Employment was estimated to be:
- 39% below its long-run trend in the United States
- 33% below trend in Canada
- 27% below trend in Germany
10
These figures do not mean AI alone eliminated that share of jobs. They measure employment relative to a long-run trend, and hiring can also be affected by economic conditions, changing demand, interest rates, post-pandemic normalization and company restructurings. Still, the consistency of weakness in highly exposed service work is why Goldman identifies AI as a meaningful hiring headwind in those sectors. 10
Why entry-level workers face greater risk
The evidence suggests that employers may be adjusting first through new hiring rather than sweeping reductions in existing staff. This matters most for junior workers, whose roles can include a larger share of standardized, information-processing tasks.
Goldman’s occupation-level analysis finds stronger AI-related employment headwinds for entry-level workers than for non-entry-level workers. That does not establish that every junior vacancy lost to slower hiring was replaced by AI, but it indicates that early-career hiring is a particularly important area to monitor as adoption expands. 10
Why the overall labor-market effect remains limited
Goldman’s cross-country panel covered more than 800 occupations in the US, France and Canada. Across that broad sample, a 10% increase in an occupation’s AI exposure was associated with only a 0.1-percentage-point reduction in annual headcount growth. 10
That is a modest relationship at the aggregate level. It supports a more restrained conclusion: AI’s labor-market effects so far appear concentrated in particular tasks, occupations and service industries rather than spread evenly across the entire economy.
The practical takeaway
AI adoption is already coinciding with weaker hiring in highly exposed office, technology and customer-service work. Call centres, software publishing, consulting, advertising and information services deserve particular attention, and entry-level candidates may face the earliest and strongest pressure. 10
But the available evidence is correlational, not proof of a single cause. For now, the more accurate reading is that AI is changing where companies add people—not that it has triggered a broad employment contraction across developed economies. 10
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What is the short answer to "AI Is Slowing Hiring in Exposed Sectors—But Not Causing a Broad Jobs Collapse"?
AI adoption is associated with slower hiring in the most automation exposed industries since late 2022, not broad job losses across developed economies.
What are the key points to validate first?
AI adoption is associated with slower hiring in the most automation exposed industries since late 2022, not broad job losses across developed economies. The hiring headwind is most visible in information and communication services, call centres, software publishing, management consulting and advertising; entry level workers appear more exposed than experienced workers.
What should I do next in practice?
Across more than 800 occupations in the US, France and Canada, a 10% increase in AI exposure was associated with only a 0.1 percentage point reduction in annual headcount growth—an important sign that effects remain c...