Employment is contracting across industries with established AI use cases, with these sectors losing an average of about 11,000 jobs each month over the past three months.

The figures, shared by The Kobeissi Letter, point to one of the clearest signals yet that automation is reshaping white-collar hiring. 

Hiring Reverses Across AI-Exposed Industries

The Kobeissi Letter noted that since mid-2023, the affected sectors have posted net job gains in only two separate months.

The affected group spans management consulting, graphic design, office administration, telephone call centers, and computer systems.

It also includes software publishers, web search, data processing, movie production, broadcasting, publishing, and document preparation services. 

The reversal is steep. The same industries were adding as many as 55,000 jobs a month at their 2022 peak before the trend flipped negative in 2023.

“The impact of AI on the labor market is becoming increasingly visible,”

The sector data tracks a parallel rise in direct layoff announcements. AI was the reason behind 38,579 job cuts in May, the highest monthly total on record.

May marked the third consecutive monthly increase. AI accounted for 87,714 of 2026’s year’s job cuts, or about 22% of the total last month. 

This surpassed the full-year 2025 figure of 54,836 with months still to go. While experts disagree on AI-driven job losses, a separate Gallup survey found a link between AI use and exposure to layoffs. 

The data suggests that laid-off workers were more likely to be AI non-users. The split is sharpest in tech, where workers who used AI less than monthly were three times as likely to be laid off as those who used it at least monthly.

Whether the decline deepens depends on the months ahead. The early signal is consistent, though. AI is reshaping where the jobs are, and the workers who are slowest to adopt it appear most exposed when the cuts come.

Source: BeInCrypto