A hot potato: Concerned that your job could become one of the many lost to AI? According to Apollo Global Management's chief economist, you're worrying about nothing! Torsten Sløk claims that there is "zero evidence" of job losses because of AI, which will likely come as a surprise to the tens of thousands of people who have lost their jobs to AI.
Writing in a post last week titled "Zero Evidence of AI-Related Job Losses," Sløk points to ADP employment data to support his conclusion. The report found that private companies added almost 110,000 people to their payrolls in April.
The executive argues that instead of lowering headcounts, many firms are hiring AI implementation experts.
"The bottom line is that the AI spending boom is stoking both employment and inflation," Sløk writes. "It is Jevons paradox playing out in real time: cheaper technology is creating more demand and more jobs."
There seems to be a sudden spate of claims that AI isn't actually taking people's jobs. OpenAI boss Sam Altman recently said he was "delighted" that his AI jobs apocalypse prediction was wrong. Box CEO Aaron Levie, Dell boss Michael Dell, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon all have similar opinions. The fact that they are heads of companies heavily invested in AI definitely has nothing to do with it.
To suddenly start claiming AI isn't causing job losses almost feels like gaslighting. There have been almost 116,000 layoffs in the tech world so far in 2026, quickly approaching the 124,000 that we saw for the entirety of 2025. And a massive number have been tied to AI, either through direct job replacement or companies' resources being redirected toward AI infrastructure.
It was only last week that Wix laid off 1,000 people while citing the "fast evolution" of AI. Earlier this year, Block laid off over 4,000 people and couldn't have been clearer that it was because of AI reducing staffing needs. Intuit, Meta, Amazon, Cisco, IBM – the list of companies that have done the same thing is an extensive one.
The future doesn't look much better. A recent survey of almost 1,000 executives found that 99% said they expected AI to lead to reduced worker numbers at their companies in the next two years.
While it might be true that jobs are being created as a result of AI adoption – and that some companies blame the technology even when the layoffs have little to do with it – saying there is no evidence of AI-related job losses seems misleading at best and disingenuous at worst.