Firms Blame AI for Job Cuts, Critics Call It “Good Excuse”

Across industries, from tech to airlines, major global corporations are reducing their workforces, citing the increasing impact of artificial intelligence. This trend has understandably rattled employees, but some critics argue that AI is becoming a convenient scapegoat for firms seeking to downsize for broader economic reasons.

Recent examples include Accenture, which announced a restructuring plan last month that prioritizes the departure of employees who are unable to rapidly adapt and reskill in AI. Similarly, Lufthansa revealed plans to eliminate 4,000 positions by 2030, attributing the decision to leveraging AI for enhanced operational efficiency. Salesforce also laid off 4,000 customer support staff in September, stating that AI could handle approximately 50% of the workload. Fintech company Klarna reported a 40% reduction in personnel as it actively integrated AI-powered tools.

Even language-learning platform Duolingo has indicated a shift away from contractors, opting to utilize AI to fill the resulting gaps. These developments have raised concerns about the future of work and the potential displacement of human workers by AI.

However, Fabian Stephany, an assistant professor specializing in AI and the future of work at the Oxford Internet Institute, suggests a more nuanced perspective. According to Stephany, companies are leveraging AI’s disruptive narrative to mask other strategic imperatives.

“Previously, there may have been some stigma attached to using AI, but now companies are ‘scapegoating’ the technology to take the fall for challenging business moves such as layoffs,” Stephany told CNBC.

Stephany believes that companies are essentially positioning themselves at the leading edge of AI technology to project an image of innovation and competitiveness, while simultaneously obscuring the actual drivers behind workforce reductions.

“There might be various other reasons why companies are having to get rid of part of their workforce … Duolingo or Klarna are really prime candidates for this because there has been overhiring during Corona [Covid-19 pandemic] as well,” the professor said.

The pandemic-era boom fueled aggressive hiring sprees at many companies, which are now adjusting to more sustainable levels. “It’s to some extent firing people that for whom there had not been a sustainable long term perspective and instead of saying “we miscalculated this two, three years ago, they can now come to the scapegoating, and that is saying ‘it’s because of AI though,’” Stephany added.

This trend has fueled debate, with some industry leaders expressing skepticism about the true extent of AI integration. Jean-Christophe Bouglé, co-founder of Authentic.ly, argued in a LinkedIn post that AI adoption is proceeding “much slower pace” than advertised, with many large corporations facing challenges in implementing AI projects due to cost and security concerns.

“At the same time there are announcements of big layoff plans ‘because of AI.’ It looks like a big excuse, in a context where the economy in many countries is slowing down, despite what the incredible performance of stock exchanges suggest,” said Bouglé.

According to Jasmine Escalera, a careers expert, this lack of transparency is “feeding the fear of AI,” Employees globally are worried jobs being replaced as a result of AI.

“So we already know that employees are scared because companies are not being honest, open and communicative about how they’re implementing AI,” Escalera told CNBC Make It. “Now companies are openly stating ‘We’re doing this [layoffs] because of AI’ so it’s feeding the frenzy.”

Escalera stated that big companies need to be more responsible as they set the tone for what’s the norm in business decision making and avoid greenlighting “bad behavior.”

A Salesforce spokesperson clarified to CNBC that the company deployed its own AI agent, Agentforce, which reduced the number of customer support cases and eliminated the need to “backfill support engineer roles,” they said.

“We’ve successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into other areas like professional services, sales, and customer success,” the Salesforce spokesperson added.

Klarna, in response to an inquiry from CNBC, referred to comments made by co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski on X, clarifying that AI was “only part of that story” regarding the company’s workforce reduction from 5,500 to 3,000 employees over two years.

Siemiatkowski attributed the workforce reduction to the streamlining of its analytics team and the natural attrition of employees within its customer success division.

Lufthansa and Accenture declined to comment on the matter and did not share any further details on their AI restructuring strategy. Duolingo did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

A recent report from The Budget Lab, a non-partisan policy research center at Yale University, indicates that AI automation has had a limited impact on the U.S. labor market since the introduction of ChatGPT in 2022.

The lab analyzed U.S. labor market data, comparing the shift in the occupational mix since AI’s debut to that of other technological shifts such as the introduction of computers and the internet, concluding that AI has yet to trigger widespread job losses.

Similarly, economists at the New York Fed released research in early September suggesting that AI adoption among firms “do not point to significant reductions in employment” across service and manufacturing industries in the New York–Northern New Jersey region.

The study found that while AI adoption has increased significantly in both sectors, the use of AI as a direct driver for layoffs remains relatively low.

Only 1% of the services firm reported AI as the reason for laying off workers in the past six months, down from 10% that had laid off workers using AI in 2024. Meanwhile, 12% of services firms said AI made them hire less workers in 2025.

By contrast, 35% of services firms have used AI to retrain employees and 11% have hired more as a result.

Stephany echoed these findings, emphasizing the lack of robust evidence supporting claims of widespread technological unemployment due to AI.

“Economists call this structural unemployment, so the pie of work is not big enough for everybody anymore and so people will lose jobs definitely because of of AI, I don’t think that this is happening on a mass scale,” he said.

He further added that concerns about technology replacing human work have been a recurring theme throughout history. “It reoccurred this century alone a dozen times, you can go back to ancient times where Roman emperors put hold to certain machines because they were worried about this and always the contrary happened. The machine made companies, industries more productive.”

“It allowed for the emergence of entirely new jobs. If you think about the internet 20 years ago, nobody would have known what a social media influencer is, what an app developer is because it didn’t exist.”

Amidst these evolving dynamics, companies must navigate the complexities of AI integration with transparency and responsibility, addressing employee anxieties and ensuring a just transition in the age of increasingly sophisticated automation.