Companies are lying about AI layoffs?

This practice hurts all state side workers, citizen and h-1b alike.

That still wouldn't prove anything per your logic because, as you say, "Association is no proof of cause." But then the question is how could we ever proof anything like this?

> How many h1b were issued the years before AI?

The point is that companies are lying off people and saying it's AI and the economy while they still hire foreign workers. That suggests they are not telling the full story. Whether or not they are issuing more visas than before does not affect this conclusion.

1) Companies can find comparably trained and educated workers in non-US countries at cheaper rates because the U.S. education system doesn’t discriminate against less performant students. The education systems in many other countries are competitive at various stages and serve as strict filters against laggards, and there’s less consideration for meeting basic human needs in some countries. But in others there are different options where many students naturally find themselves (like less paying or blue collar work), and if that were to happen in the U.S. then inequality advocates will have a lot to say, and they wouldn’t be wrong.

2) There are a lot of realpolitiks at play when you have a multicultural society as people will often have dual allegiances. A CEO or hiring manager from country X or Y will want to favor their country of origin, naturally. It becomes easier to justify some decisions when the bottom line is also helped by said decisions by hiring cheaper labor.

3) The most expensive thing on the U.S. budget books for employers, employees and the government is social security and Medicare. Some countries simply deny their citizens and workers social security and access to welfare programs, which helps keep the cost of employing them down.

4) Even if a global corporate tax rate is set, it will still make labor in countries that don’t ask for social program contributions much cheaper.

5) The rule of law situation in some of these countries is less than ideal, and so living there can be a hit or miss, which is why H1-Bs are a popular choice for both employers and non-U.S. employees.

6) But still it seems that regional security and stability in some regions has led to permissive environments for unrestricted work. This situation isn’t going to change for nuclear countries, unless they’re like Russia (screwed by economic sanctions and expansionist desires).

So in the short-term, unless there’s some agreement to be made between countries for balancing their labor market loads, then economic sanctions seem like a terrible last resort.

Addendum, I think the hard truth for large cap companies is that they never should have been allowed to get that big, and in many cases their growth was aided by direct investment by the U.S. government. There’s an interesting lesson here for policy makers about balancing power and investments. Maybe the U.S. should divert future government spending to only its research labs.

Correct, but we don't have that information so we have to rely on a best guess. We're not dealing with code here where everything is known exactly.

> Yet, the main question for actually measuring the (firm and investor expected) impact of AI is whether that rate of headcount growth has changed without the stock price going down.

Stock price is not necessarily a proxy for headcount either. Some companies have much lower headcounts per stock price (for example, Nvidia).

> That is, is it now proposed by management and accepted by investors that the firm will henceforth require less human labor in order to deliver on the present expected value of future free cash flow.

You are just talking without thinking now are you? It makes no sense. Human labor and free cash flow are probably correlated, but one isn't a proxy for the other. First you relate stock price to headcount and then you say "that is" and then you suddenly relate cash flow to headcount. Cash flow and stock price are correlated per industry, but it's also a very loose one.

> You cannot infer anything about this question from the data shown.

False. I only need to infer a tiny bit in order to falsify your extremely strong claim.

> For this, you would need to look at net hires year after year and prove that a growing percent thereof are H1-Bs.

Yes, this is something concrete that I can agree on. But how would you prove that given that we don't have access to that data?