Concerns about losing AI-related jobs grow every time another company announces layoffs. By May 2026, companies have reported that nearly 90,000 jobs are related to AI, and by some accounts, up to 15% of U.S. jobs are expected to be eliminated by AI over the next five years. Promises from the tech industry that AI will create new jobs do little to allay fears. This is especially true for a generation that wonders whether anyone will hire them when they graduate.
A recent report from Ramp and Revelio Labs, which track enterprise AI spending and workforce records for nearly 22,000 companies each, complicates this gloomy story.
The report found that companies spending heavily on AI are growing headcount faster, even in entry-level roles that many fear. According to the report, in the first three months, headcount at “high-adopter companies,” which spend an average of $30 per employee per month on AI, increased by 10.2%.
Additionally, headcount has increased across functions including engineering, sales, management, customer service, finance, marketing and scientific roles. The strongest job growth among high-intensity adopters was in the information sector, which includes software, Internet, media, and technology-adjacent companies.
Despite these positive signs, the data is not as rosy as it seems. This is heavily skewed toward tech-oriented, knowledge-based companies that can get VC backing and are growing fast anyway, so it’s hard to say whether AI is contributing to hiring or showing up in companies that are scaling anyway.
“This paper does not show that AI will universally create jobs,” the paper’s authors admit, “but it refutes claims that AI will cause widespread job losses.”
It also counters claims that AI is eliminating all low-level jobs. A recent study by Goldman Sachs found that AI has already led to the loss of about 16,000 net jobs each month over the past year, with Gen Z and entry-level workers bearing the brunt of the burden. However, for technology-leading companies, the report found that the number of new hires actually increased by 12%.
So what do we gain from this? Perhaps AI will not always be a tool for labor replacement, but may instead become a tool for enterprise expansion.
“For software and technology companies, AI can help them produce core deliverables more cheaply or faster, including writing code, debugging, building internal tools, writing technical documentation, and supporting product development,” the report said. “Lowering production costs in these workflows allows us to increase profits as we scale not only our engineering teams, but our entire company.”
However, according to the report, companies that buy subscriptions and run pilots but don’t make ongoing investments tend not to see headcount growth.
This sets up the potential for a widening gap between companies with the resources – capital, technical staff, network of founders, and management bandwidth – to turn AI adoption into real business benefits, and those struggling to experiment with subscriptions. In other words, the report suggests that companies that already have resources are those that stand to benefit the most.
The paper’s authors speculate that this gap could continue to grow, saying “companies without these channels may be left behind.”
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