New report complicates the AI jobs debate
While fears of AI-related job losses mount, a new study shows that companies investing heavily in artificial intelligence are actually growing their workforce, including entry-level roles.
The AI Jobs Debate Just Got Messier
Anxiety over job displacement by artificial intelligence (AI) grows with each new round of layoffs announced by companies. Through May 2026, firms have announced nearly 90,000 job cuts linked to AI, and some projections suggest up to 15% of U.S. jobs could be eliminated by AI over the next five years.
However, a recent report from Ramp and Revelio Labs, which track enterprise AI spending and workforce records from nearly 22,000 companies respectively, complicates that bleak narrative. The report found that companies spending heavily on AI are actually increasing headcount faster, including in the entry-level positions many fear are doomed.
According to the report, "high-intensity adopters" — firms that spend an average of $30 per employee per month on AI in the first three months — saw headcount grow by 10.2%. Headcount also rose across functions, including engineering, sales, administration, customer service, finance, marketing, and scientist roles. The strongest job growth among high-intensity adopters was in the information sector, which includes software, internet, media, and tech-adjacent firms.
Despite these positive signals, the data isn't as rosy as it seems. It skews heavily toward tech-forward, knowledge-work firms — ones that might have venture capital backing and are growing fast anyway, making it difficult to say whether AI is contributing to hiring or just appearing at expanding companies.
"This paper does not show that AI universally creates jobs," the authors admit, "but it does counter claims that AI will lead to broad job losses." It also counters claims that AI is killing all junior jobs. Recent research from Goldman Sachs found that AI has already erased about 16,000 net jobs per month over the past year, with Gen Z and entry-level workers taking the brunt. But in tech-forward firms, entry-level headcount actually rose by 12%.
So what can we take away? Perhaps that AI isn't always a tool for labor substitution but can be a tool for firm expansion. "For software and technology firms, AI can make core output cheaper or faster to produce: writing code, debugging, building internal tools, producing technical documentation, and supporting product development," the report reads. "Lower production costs in these workflows can raise the return to expanding the whole firm, not just the engineering team."
But companies that buy subscriptions and run pilots yet fail to make sustained investments do not see headcount gains, per the report. That sets up a potential widening gap between firms with resources — like capital, technical staff, founder networks, and management bandwidth — to turn AI adoption into actual business gains and those stuck experimenting with subscriptions. The authors speculate such a divide may continue to grow, stating: "Firms without those channels may fall behind."
