Welcome to The AI Shift, our weekly newsletter about AI and the labour market.
Before getting into this week’s edition on how LLMs are reshaping recruitment, we thought we would briefly check in on the job displacement story in light of splashy job cut announcements by Amazon and others as well as a new UK employer survey warning of sizeable AI-induced cuts over the year ahead. So, is the job-pocalypse now upon us? We remain sceptical. First, many of the big US companies announcing lay-offs have themselves pointed to unwinding their post-pandemic hiring sprees. Second, sweeping cuts (which also happen to be well within normal bounds for the companies in question) look more like routine attempts at trimming the fat. And third, overall US lay-offs remain steady. But we’re keeping a close eye on this story and will have some of our own fine-grained analysis for you soon.