The AI Jobs Story Is
Starting to Flip
For two years, the AI-and-jobs conversation ran one way: smarter software, fewer workers. Recent data complicates that rather than confirming it.
TCS onboarded 14,000 freshers and hired 9,279 employees in the April–June quarter, bringing its total to 593,798. The company plans to hire 25,000 people this fiscal year. This comes after TCS reduced the number of middle and senior management employees through 2025, making them a prime example for hiring caution related to AI. According to Indeed's Hiring Lab, posting losses in AI-exposed professions, such as software development, were the greatest globally between 2022 and 2026. However, over the past year, this relationship has reversed, with AI-fluent, senior roles now driving the rebound. According to a separate Ramp Economics Lab and Revelio Labs research of almost 22,000 US businesses, organizations who invest the most in AI are expanding their workforces more quickly, including at entry-level positions.
The reversal reached the top of the industry too. OpenAI's Sam Altman, who had previously warned that entire job categories would disappear altogether, said in late May that he had significantly misjudged the pace of AI's economic impact and that he was glad the damage to entry-level roles had not been as severe as he once feared. He pointed to a personal example: after testing AI to handle his Slack messages and emails, he found himself going back to answer many himself. Anthropic's Dario Amodei, who had projected AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, made a similar shift the same week. On the other hand, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has separately cast doubt on the idea of a sweeping AI jobs apocalypse, arguing the disruption is likely to be more gradual and uneven across industries than the early warnings suggested. Nvidia's Jensen Huang holds the most optimistic view. He argues AI won't shrink the total number of jobs. Instead, it will reward workers who adapt and use the technology, rather than replacing them outright. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman is more cautious. He has predicted AI could automate most white-collar work within about 18 months, an even shorter timeline than Altman's original warnings.
Some data backs the more optimistic view. The Yale Budget Lab has tracked US job data since ChatGPT launched in 2022. It found no real change in unemployment or the types of jobs people hold, even in roles most exposed to AI, through March 2026. A separate Brookings Institution report found something similar: AI's capabilities have grown fast, but this hasn't yet led to major economic disruption or widespread adoption at work, though it warned this could change as adoption picks up. Still, the tougher data hasn't gone away. Challenger, Gray & Christmas found AI was the top reason companies gave for job cuts in June, and large tech and financial firms keep announcing layoffs. Both things are probably true at once: some companies use AI as a convenient excuse for ordinary cost-cutting, while real AI-related hiring is growing in other places.
For India, this matters because IT employs close to 5.8 million people, per NASSCOM. AI requirements now feature in a large share of new contracts, and firms are shifting hiring toward Even though traditional hiring is still selective, a significant portion of new contracts increasingly include AI requirements, and businesses are shifting hiring toward AI professionals. Although a fourth of TCS data doesn't support a trend, it does fit a global pattern that suggests the relationship between AI exposure and job losses isn't as straightforward as initially thought.
By Srishti Mendiratta | SEBI-Registered Research Analyst – INH000024295
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