A somewhat reassuring tone amid a chorus of “AI is coming for your job” is coming from a top Fed official.<\/p>\n
“I think if AI has the improvement to productivity that everyone’s describing, it’s going to make us rich … So if you think that if we come back in 10 years, that the steady-state unemployment rate is going to be 15% or something, I’ll take the under on that,” Chicago Federal Reserve Bank president Austan Goolsbee told Yahoo Finance at the Semafor World Economy<\/a> conference (video above).<\/p>\n “I think the nature of jobs are going to change,” he added. “There have been many changes to the nature of many jobs over a lot of decades. We have a pretty good sense that there can be short-run disruptions. And then in the long run, most of these big technologies are job creators on net, not job destroyers.”<\/p>\n Goolsbee’s take is the opposite of the headline-making report from Citrini Research in February that stunned many economists and investors.<\/p>\n The report outlined a “doom loop” where AI-driven productivity triggers a white-collar unemployment crisis. The report presented a hypothetical scenario where US unemployment surges to 10% by 2028 as companies replace high-income knowledge workers with autonomous AI agents.<\/p>\n Suffice it to say, the world is nowhere near this doom-loop point. But recent tech layoffs have been eye-popping, including massive job reductions at Block (XYZ<\/a>), Amazon (AMZN<\/a>), Oracle (ORCL<\/a>), and Meta (META<\/a>) this year.<\/p>\n Read more: Do you pay taxes on unemployment? What to expect when you file your return.<\/a><\/p>\n Block’s AI-related layoffs were particularly painful, as the workforce was cut by a whopping 40%.<\/p>\n “I would encourage everybody, including my fellow CFOs, to just be curious and using the tools,” Block CFO Amrita Ahuja told Yahoo Finance about the decision<\/a>. “You often don’t get the ‘aha moment’ until you realize you’ve automated a piece of your work \u2014 something that might have taken days before can now take hours or less.”<\/p>\n Oracle’s layoffs were nothing to sneeze at either.<\/p>\n With billionaire founder Larry Ellison still pulling the strings, the company reportedly laid off up to 30,000 workers across the US, Mexico, and other countries on April 1.<\/p>\n More than 52,000 US tech employees were laid off within the first three months of 2026, according to an analysis done<\/a> by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. A good portion of those layoffs were tied to AI adoption.<\/p>\n The tech industry announced 18,720 job cuts in March, a 40% year-over-year increase. It’s the highest year-to-date total for the sector since 2023, when 102,391 job cuts were recorded.<\/p>\n More tech layoffs are likely to come in 2026, Challenger, Gray & Christmas warned.<\/p>\n “In the long run, of course, you get the massive increase in productivity, and you start to see job shedding, something we’re already seeing right now among some of the more advanced Big Tech in ‘Magnificent Seven’ firms,” economist Nouriel Roubini explained on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid<\/a>. “At the aggregate level, the weakness in the labor market has been driven more in the last year by supply of labor, because we have aging of the population and we have restrictions to migration.”<\/p>\n Brian Sozzi<\/a> is Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor and a member of Yahoo Finance’s editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi<\/a>, Instagram<\/a>, and LinkedIn<\/a>. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.<\/p>\n Click here for in-depth analysis of the latest stock market news and events moving stock prices<\/a><\/p>\n Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance<\/a><\/p>\n