I've seen it affecting in a few ways: Less customer service employees at call centers, replaced by lengthy, egregiously pedantic AI systems. Some fast food places are replacing employees with an AI drive through. I've also seen AI health coaching services that removes the dietitian/nutritionist/health coach from the equation. Not quite AI, but getting there, are the self checkouts slowly replacing front line cashiers, etc.
So I think it is affecting the job market, but not in the white collar, higher paying jobs that people tend to notice.
What is AI providing in the drive through situation? It just feels to me like much of this is "AI" in the business buzz sense, not generative LLMs or whatever doing any kind of work. Like, we have all been struggling with call center "AI" for a long time before this, I personally have not experienced an LLM chatbot call, but plenty of things asking me "is this information correct?"
Like how would some of this even work in reality? Can you go through those drive throughs and ask it to recite a sonnet about chicken nuggets? Clearly no, but then it begs the question of what the idea, the purported advance, even is here with much of this. Like we have had relatively advanced speech recognition for a while, I don't see the added utility or need of being able to go through the drive through and saying: "the number of hotdogs I want is a prime number that is more than 2 but less than 5."
It just feels so clearly silly if you stop and think about it for two seconds. So many hammers, not enough nails... We are just banging at walls at this point.
Walgreens is really pushing the AI phone system these days. It lies and says it can handle most requests, which I make and it tries to pawn me off on the website. The website which I had already been to, which recommended I speak with a pharmacist. I swear by the time it’s passed my call through it sounds like exasperated when it says “Just so you know, the pharmacy is open. . . .”
> Not quite AI, but getting there, are the self checkouts slowly replacing front line cashiers, etc.
There's some AI involved at some retailers - I bought 2 identical items and the second wouldn't scan at the self checkout, so I grabbed the first item and scanned it again, and the camera-watching, object-detection system threw a fit (and played back the video of me). I had to call a human to complete my purchase. My suspicion is it is smart enough to detect that I moved an "unscanned" item from my basket item into the bagging area, but not smart enough to figure out I wasn't trying to cheat.
Yes, but when Marc Benioff says he laid off thousands of customer service agents, the reporting is "Salesforce cuts tech workers using AI." The narrative in media is a total mess right now, and there are many in VC and AI-related companies ready to help muddy the waters further for their own benefit. Obviously, many small companies follow the media narrative.
I work in the media space. AI is absolutely ripping through film, TV, and advertising.
Several medium sized studios I've talked with are bidding $50k for projects (eg. Netflix, HBO, Proctor & Gamble are typical clients) they used to bid $400k on, and they're winning more contracts. They don't need to shoot in person in Venice for pharma ads or animate elaborate TV show intros anymore.
This is having a huge impact to the fundamentals of how they do business. They haven't laid anyone off yet, but they're talking about the ramifications if this gets cheaper.
Self checkout in supermarkets apparently is quite a rocky thing, some chains see profits go down after implementing them. The potential for catastrophic mistakes in LLMs is very high, like ordering 3000 big macs.
Sure in the case of 3000 big macs it would be caught by the buyer or the cooks, but ordering 6 instead of 3 will not. This will cause complaints, complaints need more people to handle, etc.
I once called a hotel. A suspiciously regular voice answered. I asked if it was a machine. It said yes, it's [AI marketing bullshit here]. I asked if it had a room. It said no, because it's [AI BS] and doesn't need a physical presence such as a room. I hung up and called another hotel.
A lot of the applications listed don't need humans and probably don't even need "AI" either. At least not beyond speech to text.
When my Xbox 360 hit the red ring of death, I called in to Microsoft support and went through the flow to replace it with just pre-recorded responses and speech to text. This was in 2007.
> Less customer service employees at call centers, replaced by lengthy, egregiously pedantic AI systems.
Is this actually worse than being on hold forever to talk to someone following a script?
> Some fast food places are replacing employees with an AI drive through.
What, as in it transcribes your order with Whisper and tries to upsell you through ChatGPT? One more reason I'm glad not to have a car-centric lifestyle, I guess. The kiosks inside the store might be vibe-coded now but at least I get a traditional UI that lets me specify things directly (even if the kitchen staff will ignore most requested customizations).
A couple of things. I'm not disputing the findings here, but I do think there are some caveats to be aware of.
Firstly, this doesn't seem to differentiate between fields/industries. It's entirely possible for AI to devastate a particular segment (like graphic design or software dev, etc) while still appearing low-impact on the overall.
Secondly,
> "Businesses reported a notable increase in AI use over the past year, yet very few firms reported AI-induced layoffs," New York Fed economists wrote in the blog.
Is this only relying on self-reporting? What company wants to be the lightning rod who comes out and says, "we laid off a bunch of people and replaced with AI"? Maybe for huge public companies that can't fudge it this would be ok, but relying on self-reports comes with an inherent risk of bias
I don't think AI is actively laying people off by replacing entire roles, but I think it is preventing hires that would have happened. In terms of employment figures, this can have a similar effect.
I'm in a small growing tech company and I can say as a matter of fact that in a world without AI we would have made several hires in the past 18 months. Because of LLMs and agents my team doesn't have the need to bring more people in. It's as simple as that.
> What company wants to be the lightning rod who comes out and says, "we laid off a bunch of people and replaced with AI"?
Isn't that precisely what all publicly traded companies want to say, and are often saying? I feel like I read a new headline of some sociopathic CEO bragging about how many people he managed to lay off thanks to AI every day.
There are two levels here. It isn't affecting the actual job market (what the Fed's talking about), but it's having a huge impact on the narratives surrounding it and the pipelines feeding into it (e.g. resume spamming and slush pipe filtering).
AI may not affect tech jobs in NYC and other marquee locations and big city hubs in the near future. We could see a trend of smaller office locations get shuttered, and more people asked to relocate to major hubs/HQs. So I can understand the picture in NYC.
But if they’re talking about New York state as a whole, then I’d question their data/or inference. Companies in the area haven’t hired much in the last couple of years. Now we’ve got more layoff pressure on top of the non-existent hiring. The other day, Mark Benioff (Salesforce CEO) very clearly said on TV that his main problem is that he “need(s) fewer heads”.
Edit: Lightly updated my outlook to sound less decisive because I don’t really know anymore. So much is up in the air. Policy decisions at the government level could alter how it all plays out.
>"Indeed, for those already employed, our results indicate AI is more likely to result in retraining than job loss, similar to our findings from last year
>The New York Fed blog noted that the modest impact on jobs so far may not hold in the future. "Looking ahead, firms anticipate more significant layoffs and scaled-back hiring as they continue to integrate AI into their operations," New York Fed researchers wrote.
Oh okay, so the title should be "AI not affecting the [financial] Job Market... yet"
Best as I can tell, and I'm just some guy, is there is a real problem with the job market, not just in the US. AI is mainly interesting for the media to report on and hype for CEOs and the kind of MBA airheads no one with any self respect should pay attention to. It's a fairly cool search, synthesis and retrieval tool with real value but it's not as impactful as 'thoughtleaders' want us to believe.
In the US as elsewhere it's a combination of factors, COVID overhiring and inflation, interest rates going up, market concentration and, US specific, the since Trump-reversed Trump-imposed tax changes. While this reversal probably helps the job market some in the immediate term the indicators of the fundamentals are flashing red everywhere and outside of the US it all just continues to be part of the same Omnirecession since 2008.
>Maybe it hasn’t come for jobs that are not entry level yet.
You don't layoff what you don't hire, so ou can argue it "hasn't affected the job market" if hiring freezes are just that. Not growing, but not really declining either.
The AI hype seems to be a smokescreen for mass layoffs from the CoVid era. The increased attention on the H-1B visa’s hiring process and labor market impact reveals a far more underreported and significant contributor to job shortages. Also, a lot of these companies have existed way longer than they should have.
Be happy you’re not employed in tech course content creation or something that is directly replaceable TODAY, like language translation or low-level graphic design.
> The AI hype seems to be a smokescreen for mass layoffs from the CoVid era
This. Better to tell markets "we can now downsize our workforce due to incredible efficiencies achieved by our AI initiative" than "we hired too many people, grew slower than expected and now we're making cuts"
> Salesforce forecast third-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, signaling lagging monetization for its highly-touted artificial intelligence agent platform as clients dial back spending due to macroeconomic uncertainty.
> The cloud software provider also announced a $20 billion increase to its existing share buyback program, but that was unable to allay investors' concerns, sending Salesforce's shares down over 5% in extended trading.
Salesforce revenue growth has decelerated from ~24% in FY 2021 to just over 8% for the trailing 12 months.
A company that was tuned to double revenue in 3 years transforming in one expecting to double in 9 years is definitely carrying too many people. It made sense for them to reduce headcount to align with their much slower growth curve.
Side note: Benioff also said earlier this year that they were done hiring programmers because AI. I'll let their careers page put the lie to that.
4k jobs across the economy is far less than random variation in the stats.
Salesforce reduced their headcount in 2023 by 8-10%. Another reduction by 5% attributed solely to AI could be a half truth and the reality could simply be Salesforce driving an efficiency agenda.
Personally, I believe it will take a few more years for systems to be built. Once those systems are in place, then headcount reductions are going to come fast and wide. Or putting it simply think of it as exponential growth. Currently AI job displacements are small, but it's growing, and will continue accelerating in its growth.
Salesforce just gave weak guidance. "Company that doesn't expect to do so well lays people off" is a pretty standard story, and one might be forgiven for thinking that "Company that expects magic robots to do everything lays people off" is, in this case, more marketing than anything else.
I wouldn't necessarily pay that much attention to what the CEO _says_.
i can only speak to my personal experiences and not the entire "Job Market" but i have seen qualified, competent team members let go during "positive transformations" and expectations that their workload will be covered by others while corporate crows about how using AI will be such a force multiplier for those who remain.
the NY Fed actually said "very few firms reported AI-induced layoffs"
this is quite different than "not affecting job market"
We don't expect mass layoffs from AI (yet), but we do see companies not hiring, especially entry level workers, because of the promises of AI (real or imagined)
There seems to be wishful thinking on HN where people seem very biased in general against any article that claims AI is taking jobs, and supportive by default of any article that claims it isn't. For some reason many people just refuse to accept that AI could even just be one of many reasons leading to job loss.
You're absolutely right about the HN bias, but we're also a crowd with a lot of experience in some of the jobs supposedly being replaced and with the tools supposedly replacing us, and it's a little hard to buy.
The data about new grads not being hired isn't lying, but if AI is to blame we should be seeing a flood of data and stories on how roles X, Y and Z were obliterated by AI. But I have yet to see a single solid example, so I find it hard to believe it's a massive shift.
If anything, I would expect AI to be replacing older, expensive workers with young, tech-savvy workers who can put the AI to use. But that is clearly not the case.
> The New York Fed blog noted that the modest impact on jobs so far may not hold in the future. "Looking ahead, firms anticipate more significant layoffs and scaled-back hiring as they continue to integrate AI into their operations," New York Fed researchers wrote.
AI hasn’t don’t anything. It hasn’t eliminated jobs. It hasn’t increased revenues. It’s just another shiny toy for people to play with and buy some mental laziness. It’s a nothing technology, empty calories.
[+] [-] Molitor5901|6 months ago|reply
So I think it is affecting the job market, but not in the white collar, higher paying jobs that people tend to notice.
[+] [-] beepbooptheory|6 months ago|reply
Like how would some of this even work in reality? Can you go through those drive throughs and ask it to recite a sonnet about chicken nuggets? Clearly no, but then it begs the question of what the idea, the purported advance, even is here with much of this. Like we have had relatively advanced speech recognition for a while, I don't see the added utility or need of being able to go through the drive through and saying: "the number of hotdogs I want is a prime number that is more than 2 but less than 5."
It just feels so clearly silly if you stop and think about it for two seconds. So many hammers, not enough nails... We are just banging at walls at this point.
[+] [-] zerr|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] wombatpm|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] overfeed|6 months ago|reply
There's some AI involved at some retailers - I bought 2 identical items and the second wouldn't scan at the self checkout, so I grabbed the first item and scanned it again, and the camera-watching, object-detection system threw a fit (and played back the video of me). I had to call a human to complete my purchase. My suspicion is it is smart enough to detect that I moved an "unscanned" item from my basket item into the bagging area, but not smart enough to figure out I wasn't trying to cheat.
[+] [-] DragonStrength|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] echelon|6 months ago|reply
Several medium sized studios I've talked with are bidding $50k for projects (eg. Netflix, HBO, Proctor & Gamble are typical clients) they used to bid $400k on, and they're winning more contracts. They don't need to shoot in person in Venice for pharma ads or animate elaborate TV show intros anymore.
This is having a huge impact to the fundamentals of how they do business. They haven't laid anyone off yet, but they're talking about the ramifications if this gets cheaper.
[+] [-] DanielHB|6 months ago|reply
Sure in the case of 3000 big macs it would be caught by the buyer or the cooks, but ordering 6 instead of 3 will not. This will cause complaints, complaints need more people to handle, etc.
[+] [-] immibis|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Manuel_D|6 months ago|reply
When my Xbox 360 hit the red ring of death, I called in to Microsoft support and went through the flow to replace it with just pre-recorded responses and speech to text. This was in 2007.
[+] [-] zahlman|6 months ago|reply
Is this actually worse than being on hold forever to talk to someone following a script?
> Some fast food places are replacing employees with an AI drive through.
What, as in it transcribes your order with Whisper and tries to upsell you through ChatGPT? One more reason I'm glad not to have a car-centric lifestyle, I guess. The kiosks inside the store might be vibe-coded now but at least I get a traditional UI that lets me specify things directly (even if the kitchen staff will ignore most requested customizations).
[+] [-] cryptonector|6 months ago|reply
Don't forget hallucinating too.
[+] [-] freedomben|6 months ago|reply
Firstly, this doesn't seem to differentiate between fields/industries. It's entirely possible for AI to devastate a particular segment (like graphic design or software dev, etc) while still appearing low-impact on the overall.
Secondly,
> "Businesses reported a notable increase in AI use over the past year, yet very few firms reported AI-induced layoffs," New York Fed economists wrote in the blog.
Is this only relying on self-reporting? What company wants to be the lightning rod who comes out and says, "we laid off a bunch of people and replaced with AI"? Maybe for huge public companies that can't fudge it this would be ok, but relying on self-reports comes with an inherent risk of bias
[+] [-] missedthecue|6 months ago|reply
I'm in a small growing tech company and I can say as a matter of fact that in a world without AI we would have made several hires in the past 18 months. Because of LLMs and agents my team doesn't have the need to bring more people in. It's as simple as that.
[+] [-] arthurcolle|6 months ago|reply
And Brian Armstrong at Coinbase
[+] [-] crowbahr|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] InsideOutSanta|6 months ago|reply
Isn't that precisely what all publicly traded companies want to say, and are often saying? I feel like I read a new headline of some sociopathic CEO bragging about how many people he managed to lay off thanks to AI every day.
[+] [-] MarkusQ|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] sheepscreek|6 months ago|reply
But if they’re talking about New York state as a whole, then I’d question their data/or inference. Companies in the area haven’t hired much in the last couple of years. Now we’ve got more layoff pressure on top of the non-existent hiring. The other day, Mark Benioff (Salesforce CEO) very clearly said on TV that his main problem is that he “need(s) fewer heads”.
Edit: Lightly updated my outlook to sound less decisive because I don’t really know anymore. So much is up in the air. Policy decisions at the government level could alter how it all plays out.
[+] [-] johnnyanmac|6 months ago|reply
I guess that angle it doesn't contradict this other posting earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45121342
Can't be laid off if you were never hired.
>The New York Fed blog noted that the modest impact on jobs so far may not hold in the future. "Looking ahead, firms anticipate more significant layoffs and scaled-back hiring as they continue to integrate AI into their operations," New York Fed researchers wrote.
Oh okay, so the title should be "AI not affecting the [financial] Job Market... yet"
[+] [-] esafak|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Guid_NewGuid|6 months ago|reply
In the US as elsewhere it's a combination of factors, COVID overhiring and inflation, interest rates going up, market concentration and, US specific, the since Trump-reversed Trump-imposed tax changes. While this reversal probably helps the job market some in the immediate term the indicators of the fundamentals are flashing red everywhere and outside of the US it all just continues to be part of the same Omnirecession since 2008.
[+] [-] oarla|6 months ago|reply
Maybe it hasn’t come for jobs that are not entry level yet.
[+] [-] dang|6 months ago|reply
Evidence that AI is destroying jobs for young people - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45121342 - Sept 2025 (313 comments)
AI adoption linked to 13% decline in jobs for young U.S. workers: study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45052423 - Aug 2025 (629 comments)
[+] [-] johnnyanmac|6 months ago|reply
You don't layoff what you don't hire, so ou can argue it "hasn't affected the job market" if hiring freezes are just that. Not growing, but not really declining either.
[+] [-] itqwertz|6 months ago|reply
Be happy you’re not employed in tech course content creation or something that is directly replaceable TODAY, like language translation or low-level graphic design.
[+] [-] notahacker|6 months ago|reply
This. Better to tell markets "we can now downsize our workforce due to incredible efficiencies achieved by our AI initiative" than "we hired too many people, grew slower than expected and now we're making cuts"
[+] [-] muldvarp|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stuckinhell|6 months ago|reply
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says his company has cut 4,000 customer service jobs as AI steps in: ‘I need less heads’
seems not true ?
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|6 months ago|reply
> Salesforce forecast third-quarter revenue below Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, signaling lagging monetization for its highly-touted artificial intelligence agent platform as clients dial back spending due to macroeconomic uncertainty.
> The cloud software provider also announced a $20 billion increase to its existing share buyback program, but that was unable to allay investors' concerns, sending Salesforce's shares down over 5% in extended trading.
[+] [-] runako|6 months ago|reply
A company that was tuned to double revenue in 3 years transforming in one expecting to double in 9 years is definitely carrying too many people. It made sense for them to reduce headcount to align with their much slower growth curve.
Side note: Benioff also said earlier this year that they were done hiring programmers because AI. I'll let their careers page put the lie to that.
[+] [-] josho|6 months ago|reply
Salesforce reduced their headcount in 2023 by 8-10%. Another reduction by 5% attributed solely to AI could be a half truth and the reality could simply be Salesforce driving an efficiency agenda.
Personally, I believe it will take a few more years for systems to be built. Once those systems are in place, then headcount reductions are going to come fast and wide. Or putting it simply think of it as exponential growth. Currently AI job displacements are small, but it's growing, and will continue accelerating in its growth.
[+] [-] rsynnott|6 months ago|reply
I wouldn't necessarily pay that much attention to what the CEO _says_.
[+] [-] fkyoureadthedoc|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] disillusionist|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] evolve2k|6 months ago|reply
The Evidence That AI Is Destroying Jobs For Young People Just Got Stronger
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45121342
[+] [-] emsign|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] insane_dreamer|6 months ago|reply
the NY Fed actually said "very few firms reported AI-induced layoffs"
this is quite different than "not affecting job market"
We don't expect mass layoffs from AI (yet), but we do see companies not hiring, especially entry level workers, because of the promises of AI (real or imagined)
[+] [-] j45|6 months ago|reply
Technology of any kind evolves all societies.
[+] [-] oceanplexian|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] g42gregory|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] atleastoptimal|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] causal|6 months ago|reply
The data about new grads not being hired isn't lying, but if AI is to blame we should be seeing a flood of data and stories on how roles X, Y and Z were obliterated by AI. But I have yet to see a single solid example, so I find it hard to believe it's a massive shift.
If anything, I would expect AI to be replacing older, expensive workers with young, tech-savvy workers who can put the AI to use. But that is clearly not the case.
[+] [-] physix|6 months ago|reply
> The New York Fed blog noted that the modest impact on jobs so far may not hold in the future. "Looking ahead, firms anticipate more significant layoffs and scaled-back hiring as they continue to integrate AI into their operations," New York Fed researchers wrote.
[+] [-] spongebobstoes|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tkiolp4|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] deadbabe|6 months ago|reply
[+] [-] utyop22|6 months ago|reply