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US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

bloomberg.com

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Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#161

Post by nradov »

fidotron wrote: post #148
amazingamazing wrote: post #31

The reality no one ever wants to talk about is that big tech doesn't need as many employees that it has. Anyone who has worked in big tech knows it is true.

For a long time this was compounded by a "better inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in" strategy, where you hired people to deny them to your competition and then invented things for them to do. If it turns out whole segments are in fact pointless then the endgame could be truly nuts.

That was never a major factor in employment statistics. Only a handful of the most profitable tech companies ever had the financial resources to even attempt that strategy, and only for a small fraction of their employees.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#163

Post by nradov »

interstice wrote: post #112
amazingamazing wrote: post #31

The reality no one ever wants to talk about is that big tech doesn't need as many employees that it has. Anyone who has worked in big tech knows it is true.

Okay but - if an industry can afford more employees than it has is there a real reason not to have them? Aside from shareholder greed etc.

What is "shareholder greed"? They're not running a charity.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#164

Post by nradov »

darth_avocado wrote: post #153
mempko wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was true, the big tech companies would be the most optimized. Maybe efficiency isn't the biggest factor.

Most optimized company would have 0 employees and only shareholder value.

In principle it's possible to have a company with no employees and all work done by vendors / contractors. But in practice this usually turns out to be less optimized than having at least some regular employees due to transaction costs. Organizational optimization is always a balancing act.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#165

Post by infamia »

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #144
paulddraper wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real GDP growth in Q4 was 0.5%, so it’s a heck of a lot better than that. 2% is average for past decade+.

Sure but China had double digit numbers for decades. 2% doesn't cut it unless you want your grandkids speaking Mandarin.

China hasn't seen 10% GDP growth for 15 years. It will likely fall in the 4-5% range this year as it was last year. China has a self-inflicted population decline problem that the U.S. doesn't, which will weigh on China's future growth prospects.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#166

Post by nradov »

jvanderbot wrote: post #7

> A group of 18 occupations flagged by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as exposed to AI, accounting for about 10 million jobs, saw a 0.2% drop in employment between May 2024 and May 2025, according to annual data published Friday. That compared with an increase in overall employment of 0.8% over the same period. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2024/article/industry-and-occup... https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.htm…

Have past BLS predictions proved accurate?

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#167

Post by tim333 »

> A group of 18 occupations flagged by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as exposed to AI, accounting for about 10 million jobs, saw a 0.2% drop in employment between May 2024 and May 2025

A 0.2% drop seems more like too small to tell from statistical noise more that heavy.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#168

Post by iejwjw »

rundef wrote: post #51

Whatever happened to the "AI won't replace you; someone who uses AI will" narrative?

When is that moment gonna come that boosters keep saying - wherein those who get left behind will be chopped at their legs and consequently laid off?

Many ego’s are gonna be battered after all this fizzles out

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#169

Post by nradov »

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #144
paulddraper wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real GDP growth in Q4 was 0.5%, so it’s a heck of a lot better than that. 2% is average for past decade+.

Sure but China had double digit numbers for decades. 2% doesn't cut it unless you want your grandkids speaking Mandarin.

Are China's numbers accurate? They've clearly had huge growth over the past few decades but the economic statistics are heavily manipulated at all levels and the raw data is kept secret. Top-down external estimates generally put real growth rates a bit lower.

Re: US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI

#170

Post by machinekob »

hysan wrote: post #159
amazingamazing wrote: post #31

The reality no one ever wants to talk about is that big tech doesn't need as many employees that it has. Anyone who has worked in big tech knows it is true.

I’ve had a longstanding belief that big tech purposely over-employed because it denied resources to competitors. This gave them a velocity edge despite being big and bureaucratic. In the new AI world, denying resources doesn’t slow competitors down anymore because AI raises the productivity floor. Now that over-employment brings no competitive advantage, we’re seeing huge cuts.

Dose AI really raise productivity floor that much? Do we have some good example of that?
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