:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-2248825706-91b30b5664a44f4faf154688a285d6a8.jpg "Amazon, UPS and Other Major Companies Are Making Big Job Cuts. Is AI To Blame?")
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Key Takeaways
- Corporate giants such as Amazon, UPS and Dow have made major layoff announcements in recent weeks.
- Researchers examining labor market data have so far found AI’s impact on jobs to be limited.
- Some analysts say companies may be “AI-washing” layoffs—blaming AI to distract from deeper problems.
The labor market limped into 2026, and big layoff announcements in recent weeks have added fresh anxiety to the fragile jobs picture.
Amazon.com (AMZN) said it plans to eliminate about 16,000 corporate roles, while United Parcel Service (UPS) announced 30,000 new job cuts, following an even larger reduction last year. Chemical manufacturing company Dow (DOW) slashed 4,500 jobs, or roughly 12% of its workforce, while Home Depot (HD) and Nike (NKE) each cut hundreds more.
For many workers, the fear isn’t just about layoffs—it’s about why they’re happening. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 71% of Americans worry artificial intelligence could permanently replace their job.
With AI frequently cited in corporate earnings calls and layoff announcements, it’s easy to connect the dots. But when economists and labor researchers dig into the data, a more complicated—and far less AI-driven picture—emerges.
Why This Matters To You
AI has often grabbed the headlines, but federal workforce cuts, economic conditions, and company closings drove the vast majority of last year’s 1.2 million layoffs. Researchers say some companies may be “AI-washing”—using automation as cover for deeper problems. The real story is a labor market that added just 12,000 jobs a month in the back half of 2025—compared with 186,000 per month the year before—and looks weak in early 2026.
Workers are echoing what they’re hearing from the top. Prominent CEOs, from Salesforce’s Marc Benioff to Ford’s Jim Farley to Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, have said that AI is coming for their jobs.
A string of major reports has only sparked wider worries. A November Stanford study using ADP payroll data found that early-career workers in AI-exposed occupations had a 16% employment decline after ChatGPT’s release. The World Economic Forum reported last year that 41% of employers planned to shrink their workforce where AI can automate tasks. The International Monetary Fund estimated last month that 60% of jobs in advanced economies are “exposed” to AI. Workers who haven’t adapted well to the technology have seen their employment drop by 3.6%.
Faint Evidence for AI’s Role
Despite all that, when researchers look for AI’s fingerprints in the employment data, they’re not finding much.
The Yale Budget Lab analyzed U.S. labor market data from ChatGPT’s November 2022 release through late 2025 and didn’t find any major shifts yet in the labor market. The share of workers in jobs with high, medium, and low AI exposure has remained “remarkably steady,” the researchers concluded. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas economists argued much the same in a report out last month, saying the overall impact from AI has been “small and subtle.”
Challenger, Gray & Christmas’s report on 2025 job losses gives us a broader picture. Of the 1.2 million job cuts announced in 2025, AI was blamed for fewer than 55,000, about 4.5%. Federal workforce cuts by DOGE alone drove six times that number. Economic conditions were behind another 253,000. Company closings eliminated 191,000 more. AI didn’t crack the top five.
Blame the Bot
Researchers have found that when AI is deployed at a job, it’s far more often been as a tool, not a replacement. Anthropic’s Economic Index for January, which analyzed millions of real conversations with its Claude chatbot, shows that most work-related AI use involves humans using AI for specific tasks, not automation. In addition, the index shows that the success rate for AI-assisted tasks drops sharply on complex work, suggesting the technology still needs human oversight for the work that matters most.
So why are there so many mentions of AI around recent job losses? One answer may be what some analysts have been calling “AI-washing.” Firms may now be looking to distract from strategic missteps by rebranding layoffs as an AI pivot.
“We suspect some firms are trying to dress up layoffs as a good news story rather than bad news,” an Oxford Economics report argued last month.
AI could still be reshaping the job market. The question is the timeline. The Yale Budget Lab argues that technologies like computers and the internet took decades, not months, to fully change labor markets. So far, artificial intelligence is fitting much the same pattern—no matter how often AI shows up in the layoff announcements.
