AI Effect Showing Up in US Employment Numbers

AI Effect Showing Up in US Employment Numbers

The impact of AI has reportedly begun to show up in U.S. government employment data.

A drop in financial services and IT payrolls — two sectors where artificial intelligence (AI) adoption has been quickest — accelerated this year to an average of 28,000 per month, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday (July 1), citing government data.

The report contends that this weakness is notable amid an otherwise strong job market, which created 113,000 in the first five months of the year, with that number dragged down somewhat by the banking and tech industries. Payroll data for June, due to be released Thursday (July 2), is projected to show additional gains, the report added.

Tech companies have invested heavily in AI and are now increasingly citing it as a factor in job cuts, Bloomberg added. Executives at lenders such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs have also said AI will lead to some layoffs.

“It’s certainly making an impact as we speak in a way that no technology has before,” John Challenger, CEO at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told Bloomberg.

His company, which monitors layoff plans, found nearly 102,000 announced job cuts attributed to artificial intelligence thus far in 2026, the report said, with the tech sector accounting for a third of this year’s announced layoffs.

“Finance might be the next big sector that’s most affected,” Challenger added.

The report also points to research which suggests the impact of AI on labor hinges on how companies use the tech. For example, Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab found employment has weakened in roles where the technology automates tasks, while remaining strong in roles where AI helps workers do their jobs.

Bloomberg’s report comes one day after new research showing that companies spending the most on generative AI are expanding their staff faster than businesses spending the least.

“A New Look at AI’s Impact on Jobs,” a study by corporate card firm Ramp and workforce analytics firm Revelio Labs, measured AI vendor spending against workforce records for 21,559 American companies between January 2021 through February of this year.

“AI adopters saw headcount rise 10.2% over the two years following adoption, gains the study attributed entirely to high-intensity spenders,” PYMNTS wrote. “Low-intensity adopters saw no statistically significant change in headcount over the same period. Within high-intensity adopters, the entry-level headcount grew 12%.”