AI Job Displacement – Fact or Fiction?

AI Job displacement refers to the process where the increasing adoption of AI tools in the workplace will automate some tasks currently performed by people to the extent that the AI will ultimately replace those people, reducing the demand for certain jobs while creating or transforming others. Ask any AI tool and it will focus on the positives and the transformation element of AI, the reality is that figures and estimates strongly suggest there is a significant employment shock coming down the tracks for which we are totally unprepared.

Accurate figures are hard to find, a Challenger, Gray & Christmas report, which tracks announced US job cuts gives a figure of 101,743 US job cuts which have been attributed to AI over the first 6 months of the year up to June 2026, or about 23% of all the announced US job losses during that period. There were slightly over 14,000 job losses announced in the US in June where AI was the stated reason for the job losses. That equates to 31% of all the announced job losses in the US in June, making AI the leading stated reason for cuts. There are a myriad of reasons why companies are looking to reduce headcount at the moment; such as wage inflation pressure, the rising cost of inputs, the impact of questionable tariffs or the wider geopolitical instability and its impact on both markets and customers. Some companies in the US may be using AI as a politically expedient excuse to mask the underlying reason why job losses are happening. It should be noted that AI will of course create new roles that don’t exist today and add productivity in existing ones, but it is a very significant challenge and one which – to be charitable – governments are not reacting to with alacrity.

Our Own Business Experience

Our recent client experience about the impact of AI on the hiring marketplace is sobering. Our experience has been anonymised to a degree to protect individual identities. We met with a partner in a consulting firm who had forgotten to ask his team for a briefing document ahead of a meeting with a customer for a particular country and industry. His experience with AI was such that the quality of the briefing document has made him reconsider graduate intake and the roles graduates will be asked to perform as the learn the consulting business. We’ve also spoken to another client in relation to a significant issue in their business, they ultimately elected to engage with a service provider partner rather than hire a contractor to address the problem, however they ran the problem through AI tools themselves ahead of the meeting with the service partner to frame the issue in their own minds. They were somewhat surprised that when the met with the service provider that the presentation and the proposed solution looked very familiar. This highlights one of the key challenges of AI adoption, where and how do we as individuals and businesses define and continue to add value in the workplace?

In our own business we have been approached by multiple firms offering to provide agentic AI tools that will save time, money and hassle by interviewing and shortlisting applicants for us, essentially outsourcing the selection & screening process. The sales pitch is very much you can concentrate on sales, we’ll do the back end for you. That kind of approach represents a fundamental misunderstanding of where an agency as a business adds value. If we don’t get to know our candidates, their motivations and ambitions, where do we as a business add value? We strongly feel that outsourcing that part of the process is commercial suicide for an agency in the medium term as you are outsourcing your role in the value chain. The unique challenge of recruitment is that it’s a sales process with two client sides, replacing the candidate engagement process with AI essentially reduces people to a commodity, which is diametrically opposed to our vision of our candidates being at the core of our business.

Does AI really displace jobs?

In Ireland we have seen a very high-profile example of the direct threat AI poses to employment with Meta and one of its big contractors Covalen. Covalen made headlines in spring this year when they announced that a further 720 jobs are at risk at their Dublin office following the start of a formal consultation process. Covalen provides content moderation and AI training/annotation services for Meta (Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp). The announcement follows Covalen’s previous round of redundancies that began in late 2025, which ultimately resulted in about 300 job losses. These jobs are under threat as Meta announced plans to reduce its global workforce and increase its use of AI for content moderation, reducing reliance on third-party contractors earlier this year. These job losses have brought home the reality of AI adoption in Ireland’s ICT sector, which had about 20,300 fewer jobs year-on-year by Q1 2026, a fall of roughly 10.7%. However, as stated above this cannot be attributed entirely to AI, there are wider macro factors at play such as inflation, tech restructuring and ongoing conflicts. There is also an element of right sizing going on to address the legacy of over-hiring during the Covid pandemic but its interesting to note that the announcement by Meta follows a multibillion-dollar investment in AI by the social media giant.

This year alone, Meta will invest about €125 billion in AI and, in addition to the 8,000 jobs axed globally, others were told they were being redeployed to AI development and implementation. There is some evidence that job transformation rather than simple one-for-one replacement will form part of the picture, but the reality is that according to LinkedIn hiring across the EU is 26% below pre-pandemic levels, some of which is attributable to the weak macroeconomic conditions and business uncertainty. However, there is very strong circumstantial evidence of a broad AI-driven employment shock.

The latest ESRI and Department of Finance analysis estimates that around 7% of Irish jobs could eventually be displaced by AI in the short-to-medium term—almost 200,000 roles. That would represent a massive challenge to the exchequer and potentially social cohesion if that process happens faster than expected.

Who are these 200,000 people?

AI is particularly effective at digital tasks that are data intensive, repetitive and predictable. Most jobs consist of many different tasks. AI may automate some tasks while leaving humans responsible for others. For example, AI can help a lawyer review documents and highlight inconsistencies, but the lawyer still needs to interpret complex situations, advise clients, and make professional judgments – for the moment.

Banking and insurance feature prominently in the lists of sectors expected to be hit most severely by the coming tidal wave of technological change from AI. There are slightly over 43,000 people employed in Financial Services in Ireland according to the ESRI. Customer Service is the other major area of concern, the CSO’s Labour Force Survey recorded approximately 175,000 people in the combined category of Sales and Customer Service in Q2 2024.

How useful is AI? Incredibly

While drafting this article I asked ChatGPT for an estimate of the impact of AI on Employment in Ireland and the number of jobs that will be displaced in Ireland by AI by 2030 – only 4 years away. The answer was a bleak headline number of 175,000 jobs. ChatGPT kindly pointed out that 175,000 jobs displaced did not necessarily mean that 175,000 people would be made redundant. It somewhat disingenuously suggested that some of these jobs will disappear through natural attrition and retirement – industry averages suggest about 8% annually between the two –  take that percentage compounded over 4 years out it would leave 125, 000 people out of work. ChatGPT helpfully suggested these people should move into new AI-enabled roles. While some workers will no doubt move into new AI roles, it is fanciful to think that there will be 125,000 new AI jobs created in the Irish economy in the next 4 years, that is the equivalent of 600 new AI roles being created each week over that period.

When asked what policies government should follow ChatGPT suggested the government set up an Irish AI Transition Fund financed partly from the additional economic growth and tax revenue generated by AI to fund retraining. That type of political vision is lacking and that level of AI job creation of 600 a week on a consistent basis is a pipedream.

It’s already happening

As Ken Jennings the owner of the record for the longest Jeopardy! winning streak of all time put it when he lost a quiz to IBM’s Watson in 2011, “I for one welcome our new computer overlords”

AI is not coming, it’s already here. Its impact on society is going to be massive, the impact on the climate of the data centres needed to support AI is starting to become an issue. In 2025 1 in every 4 kilowatts generated in Ireland was consumed in a Data Centre, to put that demand in context in 2015 Data Centres accounted for 5% of all electricity consumption in Ireland. The impact to the exchequer and to society in general in Ireland of an additional 100 -125,000 people on the live register is an economic challenge that can’t be underestimated.

We are in the middle of a revolution, controlled by a small number of people, some of whom have very questionable morals and ethics, essentially reengineering our economies, conducting an experiment on global society and the environment without a mandate. We haven’t even mentioned the coming threat from Quantum Computing which looks like it will for all intents and purposes circumvent all current cybersecurity protocols. Sayonora to personal privacy and data security.

Its high time our political class woke up and smelt the coffee.