
You’ve read about it all over, including in Fortune Intelligence. Maybe you or friends have been impacted: artificial intelligence is already transforming work, not least hiring and firing. Nowhere is the impact more visible than in the labor market.
The technology industry, the original epicenter of AI adoption, is now seeing many of its own workers displaced by the very innovations they helped create. Employers, racing to integrate AI into everything from cloud infrastructure to customer support, are trimming human headcount in software engineering, IT support, and administrative functions. The rise of AI-powered automation is accelerating layoffs in the tech sector, with impacted employees as high as 80,000 in one count. Microsoft alone is trimming 15,000 jobs while committing $80 billion to new AI investments.