The New York Fed reports very few redundancies attributable to AI

The companies surveyed say they are adjusting their recruitment plans and training their staff rather than cutting jobs, despite a sharp rise in the adoption of AI over the past year.

Kartik B. Athreya, director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, publishes an analysis that takes the opposite view of the dominant narrative about AI and employment. The companies surveyed report very few layoffs directly attributable to artificial intelligence. What technology shifts are recruitment priorities and in-demand skills, more than the total volume of jobs.

Adoption, on the other hand, is progressing rapidly: the share of service companies using AI has risen from 25% in 2024 to 40% in 2025, that of manufacturers from 16% to 26%, with a continuation expected in both sectors. Some companies are reducing their hiring because tasks are automated, others are actively recruiting AI-proficient profiles. The balance looks less like job destruction than a redistribution of the skills required. Survey data also show that employers are massively planning to train their existing employees rather than let go of them, and that these employees themselves place a real value on this training.

Athreya identifies two points of vigilance. First, the vulnerability of highly specialized workers, whose narrow expertise can be made obsolete in one fell swoop — the responses envisaged, from retraining to universal income, call for a cautious assessment of their undesirable effects. Second, a demand effect that is less often discussed: the reduction in costs induced by AI in principle enriches households, but could also amplify a consumption of status where relative positioning counts more than real need.