Firms are blaming AI for job cuts. Critics say it’s a ‘good excuse’

As the real-world impact of artificial intelligence emerges and scares employees, major global companies, from technology to airlines, are cutting staff. But critics say artificial intelligence has become an easy excuse for companies looking to downsize.

Last month, technology consulting firm Accenture It announced a restructuring plan that included rapid exits for employees who were unable to reskill in AI for the first time. Days later, Lufthansa It said it would eliminate 4,000 jobs by 2030 by relying on artificial intelligence to improve efficiency.

Salesforce also cut 4,000 customer support positions in September, saying AI could replace 50% of the company’s jobs. Meanwhile, fintech company Klarna It reduced headcount by 40% as it aggressively adopted AI tools.

Language learning platform Duolingo He stated that it would happen gradually. stop trusting contractors and use AI to fill in the gaps.

The headlines are bleak, but Fabian Stephany, an assistant professor of artificial intelligence at the Oxford Internet Institute, said there may be more to the layoffs than meets the eye.

There may have been some stigma attached to the use of AI before, but now companies are “scapegoating” the technology to take the blame for tough business moves like layoffs.

“I’m really skeptical about whether the layoffs we’re seeing right now are actually driven by real productivity gains. It’s a projection into AI in the sense of, ‘We can use AI to make good excuses,'” Stephany said in an interview with CNBC. he said.

Companies can essentially position themselves at the forefront of AI technology to appear innovative and competitive while also hiding the real reasons for layoffs., According to Stephany.

“There could be a variety of other reasons why companies may have to shed part of their workforce… Duolingo or Klarna are really the best candidates for this because there has been over-hiring during Corona [Covid-19 pandemic] at the same time,” said the professor.

Some companies that thrived during the pandemic have “significantly overhired,” and recent layoffs may simply be a “market clearing.”

“To some extent it’s pushing out people who don’t have a sustainable long-term perspective and saying ‘we miscalculated this two, three years ago, now they can become scapegoats and that’s saying ‘it’s because of AI,'” he added.

This pattern sparked online conversation. Jean-Christophe Bouglé, one of the founders, said in a popular speech: LinkedIn post It is stated that the adoption of artificial intelligence is “much slower” than claimed and “there are not many incidents” of AI projects being rolled back at large companies due to cost or security concerns.

“There are also announcements of major layoff plans ‘because of AI.’ “This seems like a big excuse in an environment where the economy is slowing down in many countries, despite the incredible performance of the stock markets,” said Bouglé, co-founder of Authentic.ly.

Career expert Jasmine Escalera said this obfuscation “feeds fear of AI” and that workers globally are worried their jobs will be changed as a result of AI.

“We already know that employees are afraid because companies are not being honest, open and communicative about how they are implementing AI,” Escalera told CNBC Make It. “Now companies are clearly saying ‘We’re doing this’ [layoffs] It’s fueling this craze because of AI.”

Escalera said large companies need to be more responsible in setting the tone for what is the norm in making business decisions and avoiding greenlighting “bad behavior.”

A Salesforce spokesperson told CNBC that the company has deployed its own AI agent, Agentforce, which reduces the number of customer support cases and eliminates the need to “fill support engineer roles.”

Klarna referred CNBC to its co-founder and CEO, Sebastian Siemiatkowski Comments about X He explained that the company reduced its workforce from 5,500 to 3,000 people in two years, but “AI is only part of that story.”

Siemiatkowski attributed the workforce reduction to reducing the analytics team to a single “success team”; Many people left due to natural attrition, and the company’s customer success team was also reduced.

Lufthansa and Accenture It declined to comment on the issue and did not share further details about its AI restructuring strategies. Duolingo did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Budget Lab, a nonpartisan policy research center at Yale University, published a report. report On Wednesday, it showed that the U.S. workforce has actually seen little disruption by AI automation since ChatGPT’s launch in 2022.

The lab examined U.S. labor market data from November 2022 to July 2025 using a “similarity index” that measures how much the occupational mix (the share of workers in different jobs) has changed since the debut of AI and compared it to other technological shifts, such as the introduction of computers and the internet. It turns out that artificial intelligence has not yet caused large-scale job losses.

Additionally, New York Fed economists announced research In early September, it showed that the use of artificial intelligence among firms in the services and manufacturing industry in the New York-Northern New Jersey region “did not indicate a significant decrease in employment.”

While 40 percent of service companies say they are using AI this year, up from 25 percent last year, manufacturing firms have seen a similar jump from 16 percent last year to 26 percent this year, although only a minority are using AI to lay off workers.

Only 1% of services companies reported AI as a reason for laying off workers in the last six months; This rate was 10% of those who laid off workers using artificial intelligence in 2024. Meanwhile, 12% of service firms said AI would enable them to hire fewer workers in 2025.

In contrast, 35% of service firms used AI to retrain their employees, and 11% hired more people as a result.

Stephany said his research doesn’t find much evidence showing large levels of technological unemployment due to AI.

“Economists call this structural unemployment, so the job pie is no longer big enough for everyone and people will definitely lose their jobs because of AI, I don’t see that happening on a mass scale,” he said.

He added that the concern that technology will put an end to human labor can be seen throughout history.

“This has happened a dozen times in this century alone; you can go back to ancient times when Roman emperors confiscated certain machines because they were worried about this, and the opposite always happened. Machinery companies made industries more productive.”

“It has enabled completely new businesses to emerge. If you think about the internet 20 years ago, no one knew what a social media influencer was, what an app developer was, because there was no such thing.”

Learn more about companies performing AI layoffs below: