Fears of AI-related job losses grow every time another company announces a round of layoffs. By May 2026, the companies announced that they are approaching 90,000 job cuts were linked to artificial intelligence and, by some accounts, up to 15% of US jobs are is displayed will be eliminated by artificial intelligence within the next five years. Promises from the tech industry that AI will also create new jobs do little to assuage fears, especially for the generation wondering if anyone will be hired when they graduate.
A recent report from Ramp and Revelio Labs, which track enterprise AI spending and workforce records from nearly 22,000 companies, respectively, complicates this bleak narrative.
The report found that companies spending big on AI are growing headcount faster, even in entry-level roles that many fear are doomed. According to the report, “high intensity adopters” — companies that spend an average of $30 per employee per month on AI in the first three months — saw their headcount grow by 10.2 percent.
Headcount has also increased across all functions, including engineering, sales, administration, customer service, finance, marketing and scientist roles. The strongest job growth among high-intensity adopters was in the information sector, which includes software, Internet, media and neighboring technology companies.
Despite these positive messages, the data is not as rosy as it seems. It’s heavily skewed toward tech and knowledge-work driven companies—those that may have VC backing and are growing quickly anyway, making it hard to tell whether AI is driving hiring or just showing up at companies that are expanding anyway.
“This paper does not show that AI will create jobs worldwide,” the paper’s editors admit, “but it does refute claims that AI will lead to large job losses.”
He also counters claims that AI is killing all jobs. Recent research from Goldman Sachs found that AI has already wiped out about 16,000 net jobs per month over the past year, with Gen Z and entry-level workers taking the brunt. However, at tech-forward companies, the report finds that the number of entry-level employees actually increased by 12 percent.
So what can we take away from this? Perhaps that AI is not always a tool to replace work, but that it can be a tool to expand the company.
“For software and technology companies, AI can make the core output cheaper or faster to produce: writing code, debugging, building internal tools, producing technical documentation, and supporting product development,” the report says. “Lower production costs in these workflows can increase efficiency in expanding the entire company, not just the engineering team.”
However, companies that buy memberships and run pilots, but haven’t continued to make firm investments, tend not to see headcount gains, according to the report.
This creates the potential for a widening gap between companies that have the resources—such as capital, technical staff, founder networks, and management bandwidth—to turn AI adoption into real business gains and those that are stuck experimenting with subscriptions. In other words, this report suggests that companies that already have the resources are the ones that will see the biggest gains.
The paper’s editors speculate that such a gap may continue to widen, saying, “Companies without these channels may be left behind.”
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