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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
If AI with the current capabilities and within this short timeframe would have already had a big impact on the labor market, we'd be in big trouble.
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.
https://fortune.com/2025/09/02/salesforce-ceo-billionaire-ma...
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 ?
Maybe not that they can see?
Technology of any kind evolves all societies.
Same people who say inflation is under control?
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.
There was a discussion last week about AI taking away entry level jobs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45052423
Maybe it hasn’t come for jobs that are not entry level yet.