New data reveals only 1.4% of laid-off workers have been replaced by AI
getty
Meta just laid off 8,000 employees May 20, as it accelerates AI investments and promises to pay out massive stock options to shareholders linked to AI rollout success.
This year has seen the highest number of tech layoffs since the pandemic employment upheaval, and most of these have been attributed by employers to AI rollout and implementation, fuelling the fear that AI is already replacing hundreds of thousands of jobs.
But on closer inspection, the data shows a contrasting reality: poor financial performance, the “hope” of AI, and a myriad other reasons.
This week, I had the chance to catch up with Adecco Group CEO Denis Machuel on my podcast, and he told me that, according to fresh research, only 1.4% of laid off workers have been directly replaced by AI.
This means that layoffs are designed to shed employees deemed as excess weight in an organization, when in actuality, the detrimental impact of layoffs leaves more load and greater pressure on remaining teams.
And yet, AI is often used as the smokescreen.
“There’s hype around AI, as we know, right?” Machuel began. “And a lot of speculation around, you know, how many jobs AI is going to destroy. Well, actually, if you look at the facts and layoff plans that companies are implementing, it’s different to what we assume. Just three months ago, we were asking the people that have been laid off because of AI, what they had been replaced by,” he said. “Only 1.4% of those people have been replaced by AI.
“So this overall narrative around ‘I’m laying off workers because I’m implementing AI’ is an easy way for companies to look attractive to the financial markets because of the productivity,” he said, referring to stocks rising and falling in sync with layoff announcements.
What’s Actually Going On Behind The Scenes After Layoffs?
Machuel is not the only one embracing this idea. At Workhuman’s Forum London 2026, CEO Eric Mosley shared the same sentiments–but took it a step further.
In his keynote, Mosley demonstrated what happens in organizations that rush into AI adoption and act based on blind optimism:
He referred to research that shows more than 80% of AI projects fail, wasting billions of dollars and resourcesNo more than 10% of respondents to a McKinsey survey report scaling AI agents in any business function (knowledge management, risk, HR, marketing and sales, etc.)
Mosley explained:
“Often, employers are initiating layoffs because of optimism about AI, rather than the layoffs being anchored in reality.”
So here’s the situation workers are faced with:
AI is not yet replacing work at the scale most AI layoff headlines imply.
Sure, the World Economic Forum predicts a net increase of 78 million jobs by 2030 and the loss of 92 million roles. Yet, how many of that 92 million can accurately be traced to genuine AI adoption, is a question that remains to be settled.
However, although AI is not replacing roles yet in the most genuine sense, it’s already replacing something else:
Certainty.
AI is used as the smokescreen for layoffs, but this move actually prevents AI implementation and innovation
gettyEmployees Work In Fear. Fear Inhibits AI Adoption
Employees are now forced to operate in a culture of perpetual fear, dread, and distrust–the lack of psychological safety. And ironically, this directly sabotages AI adoption, implementation, and growth and innovation within organizations.
Machuel noted in our interview that Adecco’s recent report reveals something truly striking: “Trust, not just technology, determines who adapts successfully to AI disruption.”
The Workhuman summit I attended this week reinforced the same idea. “Organizations cannot scale AI adoption faster than they scale trust,” CHRO Hollie Castro highlighted in her talk.
Speakers like Rachel Botsman spoke extensively about the need for trust and transparency in leadership, highlighting that trust is the glue that not only holds organizations together, but ensures everyone works toward the same goal of AI implementation, and that innovation is rewarded.
But for now, workers are operating inside organizations that make decisions based on not what AI is currently doing or what executives and shareholders believe it can eventually do, while at the same time facing the loss of their role due to unsteady markets and financial performance.
Today’s worker is no longer competing against automation.
They are competing against the corporate psychology that’s changing faster than the technology is actually materializing.
And employers who continue to use AI as the scapegoat may well find themselves facing a deeper long-term crisis:
A future workforce that no longer trusts leadership or AI innovation narratives–inhibiting the growth of the very technology they’re working so hard to implement.