Klarna rehires the staff it fired, as gig workers; skip AI and triple your layoff odds; Wix cuts 1,000 to fund AI; bosses call AI replacement "redesign"; Paytm hires 4,000 who speak AI

Klarna rehires the staff it fired, as gig workers; skip AI and triple your layoff odds; Wix cuts 1,000 to fund AI; bosses call AI replacement "redesign"; Paytm hires 4,000 who speak AI

Steady jobs are quietly turning into gig work Let me start with the story that should worry the most people. The Guardian looked at how AI is reshaping work, and the pattern is sometimes subtler than a clean layoff. The job survives, but it gets chopped into gig work. The example is Klarna. The company cut hundreds of customer service jobs in 2024 for an AI chatbot, then brought humans back a year later. The catch is how. It rehired them as contractors in what its CEO calls an “Uber type of set-up” [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/18/ai-threatens-gig-work-rise], where the bot handles the easy questions and gig workers take the hard ones. Researchers in the piece argue that companies often keep the work but dismantle the full-time role around it, mostly to save money. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] The benefits go first, and desk workers like customer service agents, copywriters, and analysts feel it soonest. The Guardian article illustrates the scale of the issue in numbers: A recent survey [https://www.upwork.com/resources/freelancing-stats] from Upwork found that about 60 million Americans, or 39% of the workforce, already perform freelance or gig work either full-or part-time. That number is expected to jump to 86 million – about half of the workforce – by 2027, according to Statista [https://www.statista.com/statistics/921593/gig-economy-number-of-freelancers-us/#:~:text=This%20statistic%20shows%20the%20number,of%20the%20total%20U.S.%20workforce.], a global data intelligence platform. The largest and fastest-growing segment is not rideshare drivers or delivery couriers, but knowledge workers: customer service agents, copywriters, financial analysts, paralegals, writers and coders. Once workers are classified as contractors, rather than employees, “you have the rolling back of generations of hard-won workplace protections,” says Alexandrea Ravenelle, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy. “Literally stuff that our great-grandparents died for, all of those protections are gone.” I write about this trend in my Future Forwarded Substack [https://futureforwarded.substack.com/] series of articles: “The Jenga Job: How AI Will Dismantle Work One Task at a Time [https://futureforwarded.substack.com/p/the-jenga-job-how-ai-will-dismantle],” “I Know Why the Caged Contractor Sings: How Contractor Job Loss Is the First Warning of an AI Labor Crisis [https://futureforwarded.substack.com/p/i-know-why-the-caged-contractor-sings],” and “The AI Tipping Point: How Mass Contractor Income Loss Ushers Recession [https://futureforwarded.substack.com/p/the-ai-tipping-point-how-mass-contractor].” Skipping AI now carries a real cost Here is a number that lands close to home. New Gallup research finds that tech workers who use AI at least monthly face about a 6% chance of being laid off, while those who use it less face about 18%. That is triple the risk [https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/18/business/tech-workers-who-dont-embrace-ai-face-triple-the-layoff-risk-gallup-finds/]. The estimate comes from a February survey of more than 23,000 U.S. workers, and the gap held even after accounting for age, education, and industry. The same pattern shows up outside tech, though smaller. One detail stands out. Only about 1% of laid-off workers blamed AI directly, so the shift is happening quietly. Using these tools regularly is starting to look like job insurance. Wix trims about a fifth of its staff Now a quick one that fits the trend. The web-platform company Wix plans to cut roughly 1,000 jobs, about 20% of its workforce [https://intellizence.com/insights/layoff-downsizing/major-companies-that-announced-mass-layoffs/], after a weak quarter and rising AI costs. The company points to efficiency. The workers see the bill landing on them. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. Paytm cuts 400 jobs and opens 4,000 more Over in India, two things are happening at once. The fintech company Paytm is cutting about 400 roles while opening around 4,000 new ones [https://intellizence.com/insights/layoff-downsizing/major-companies-that-announced-mass-layoffs/] tied to AI and merchant growth. So the work here is shifting rather than vanishing. The roles are being swapped for AI-fluent ones. If you can work alongside the tools, the door stays open. India’s offices race to write AI rules Here is the quieter side of all this. Across India, companies are scrambling to write rules for how workers use AI. The worry is that an employee might paste customer data or a contract into a public chatbot. Under India’s data-protection law, that can carry steep penalties [https://legistify.com/blogs/ai-use-policy-employees/]. So inside many offices there is now a second worry beyond layoffs. It is how employees are allowed to use AI without creating a legal problem for the company. BUY NOW [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/invasion_ai?_gl=1*g1iey2*_ga*OTc1NjU2NTcyLjE3NzQwMzA3NjM.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzQwMzMyMjUkbzIkZzEkdDE3NzQwMzQ2ODgkajYwJGwwJGgw]! Get the book that examines how the AI invasion already happened. You just weren’t invited. $9.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required. 2-hr reading time. A more sanguine view from the top I will end with the other side of the table. The World Economic Forum gathered six business leaders to talk through AI and talent [https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/how-ai-will-affect-work-in-different-industries/]. Their message leans toward redesign rather than cuts, with skills aging fast and roles shifting instead of disappearing. Take it for what it is, the view from the executive chair. Put it all together and the through-line holds. AI is reshaping who keeps steady work, and the people who learn the tools are landing on the safer side of the line. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The AI&Work Chronicle at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Meta spies on staff as morale craters; Walmart swears 2M jobs safe while thinning office; Microsoft warns AI to hollow communities, then ships Copilot; Nvidia boss poo-poos AI job replacement fears

Meta’s AI team is close to a revolt Let me start with the one everybody is talking about. Meta moved several thousand workers into a new Applied AI unit, and a lot of them are unhappy. Many describe repetitive data-labeling and forced reassignments [https://anz.peoplemattersglobal.com/news/ai-and-emerging-tech/whats-happening-inside-metas-ai-division-employees-say-morale-is-at-rock-bottom-50287], and a large group signed a petition against software that tracks their keystrokes and mouse movements. The company’s own technology chief, Andrew Bosworth, did something rare. He admitted the rollout went badly. He told staff that morale is near its worst in 20 years and that leadership did an “atrocious” job [https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/meta-low-morale-ai-restructuring-job-cuts-1803228]. He also noted that median pay slipped from about $417,400 to $388,200. His advice to nervous employees was blunt, if not a bit banal. AI won’t take your job, but someone who knows AI might. Walmart tells its workers not to worry Now to the company that touches the most lives. Walmart employs around 2 million people, and it is telling them their jobs are safe. The reassurance comes with fine print. The company is trimming corporate and middle-management roles, and its leadership has talked about centralizing its platforms as AI reshapes retail [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000104169/000010416926000023/pressrelease-11626.htm]. At the same time, Walmart keeps hiring cashiers, stockers, and warehouse staff. Stores still need people on the floor every day [https://www.thehrdigest.com/walmart-layoffs-continue-to-grow-the-corporate-vs-frontline-divide/]. So the message to frontline workers is steady employment, while the message to the office is leaner teams. Microsoft’s CEO compares AI to outsourcing Satya Nadella, who runs Microsoft, warned that AI could “hollow out” whole industries the same way outsourcing once gutted manufacturing. He argued that if the value piles up in a few giant models, the politics will not hold [https://www.thestreet.com/technology/microsoft-ceo-sends-a-blunt-warning-on-ai-and-the-tech-ecosystem]. He pointed back to the first wave of globalization, when the GDP numbers looked fine while the damage to workers and towns ran deep. Meanwhile, Microsoft puts its Copilot assistant inside Word, Outlook, Excel, and Teams. Those are the tools millions of people open every morning. The man warning about the potential harms of AI is also the one pushing the product. State Farm agents feel betrayed State Farm licensed an AI product for all of its agent offices and raised the limit on how many offices one agent can run, from three to six. It also ended a deferred-compensation program that agents were counting on for retirement. Agents are furious, calling it a “false promise” [https://www.nprillinois.org/illinois/2026-06-02/boiling-mad-and-fearing-an-uncertain-future-state-farm-agents-react-to-contract-changes]. One mid-career agent figures the change will cost him about $1 million over ten years. The company says its agents stay central to how it serves customers. The agents hear something different. They hear a lifetime contract getting quietly rewritten. Uber cut its HR team while overspending on AI Here is a smaller story with an outsized point. Uber eliminated about 23% of its People and Places division. The group handles human resources and workplace culture. The timing raised eyebrows. The cut came days after the company admitted it burned through its entire 2026 AI coding budget in just four months [https://www.techtimes.com/articles/317842/20260605/uber-cuts-23-hr-staff-new-president-denies-ai-role-95-engineers-use-it-daily.htm]. Uber says the two are unrelated and that the reorganization was about simplifying overlapping teams. Maybe so. Still, a company that spent its AI money fast and then cut the people who look after its people is going to invite questions. One loud voice says relax Amidst the realities of companies replacing staff because of AI-related decisions, Jensen Huang, who runs Nvidia, thinks the panic is overblown. Speaking on Bloomberg on June 1, he called the idea that AI is destroying jobs “complete nonsense” [https://247wallst.com/investing/2026/06/03/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-ai-job-losses-are-complete-nonsense-ai-driving-hiring-surge-instead/]. His argument is that AI makes each engineer more productive, so companies want more of them, not fewer. He is probably right that new jobs come eventually. The catch is timing. Early data shows employment for the youngest software developers falling while their older colleagues hold on. New jobs may arrive. The real question for workers is whether they arrive before the rent is due. Get full access to The AI&Work Chronicle at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The layoffs don't pay off, but they keep coming; India's call centers hire 17 in nine months; Anthropic funds research into smoothing its own labor disruption; "AI-first world" is code for a layoff

Start with a question that workers ask and executives avoid. If a company replaces people with AI, does the company actually make more money? A new analysis this week says the answer is often no. Gartner studied 350 firms and found that the companies cutting the most jobs showed no improvement in their financial returns [https://www.techtimes.com/articles/318466/20260616/tech-layoffs-hit-1115-day-2026-companies-cite-ai-cuts-fail-boost-returns.htm]. The cuts looked decisive. The payoff did not arrive. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] Nevertheless, the cutting keeps going. Tech layoffs are running at about 1,115 a day in 2026, and more than half of those events name AI as a reason. The damage falls hardest on the youngest workers. The junior share of tech hiring has dropped from about 15% of jobs to 7% since 2023. Recent computer science graduates now face an unemployment rate near 6.1%. The first rung of the career ladder is the rung companies are sawing off. So who catches these workers when they fall? One of the companies building the tools just put money toward answering that question. Anthropic announced a $200 million Economic Futures Research Fund [https://www.anthropic.com/economic-futures/program] on June 10, paired with a $150 million fellowship program for early-career workers. The combined pledge reaches $350 million. Its CEO, Dario Amodei, went further in a personal essay. He argued that government should promise economic support to people displaced by AI. He floated universal basic income funded by taxes on AI companies or higher capital-gains rates [https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2026-06-10/anthropic-pledges-200-million-to-research-ais-economic-impact-as-ceo-suggests-job-loss-solutions]. However, the clearest picture of the disruption comes from India. The country’s business-process-outsourcing (BPO) industry, the call centers and back offices that the world hires to handle routine work, added only 17 net employees in the first nine months of fiscal 2026 [https://cornfordandcross.com/market-insights/customer-service-bpo-the-operational-scale-displacement/]. Not 17,000. Seventeen. For an industry that once absorbed hundreds of thousands of young graduates a year, that number marks a near-total stop. The entry door into India’s service economy is closing, and AI is holding it shut. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. Now the countervailing evidence, because this story runs in more than one direction. A survey of more than 350 public-company CEOs found that 67% expect AI to increase their entry-level hiring this year [https://www.aol.com/news/ai-triggering-quiet-hiring-comeback-051521811.html], and 58% plan to add senior leaders too. These executives describe AI as reshaping work rather than erasing it. Treat this as a feeling, not a result. The survey was taken late last year, and intentions and outcomes often part ways. Still, it signals that some leaders plan to hire more. BUY NOW [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/invasion_ai?_gl=1*g1iey2*_ga*OTc1NjU2NTcyLjE3NzQwMzA3NjM.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzQwMzMyMjUkbzIkZzEkdDE3NzQwMzQ2ODgkajYwJGwwJGgw]! Get the book that examines how the AI invasion already happened. You just weren’t invited. $9.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required. 2-hr reading time. The cuts that did land this week fit the familiar pattern. The crypto-data firm Dune eliminated a quarter of its staff on June 15 [https://intellizence.com/insights/layoff-downsizing/major-companies-that-announced-mass-layoffs/]. The marketing company Gambling.com is cutting a quarter of its workforce, and its incoming chief executive framed the move as building for an “AI-first world.” The phrase has become the standard caption for a layoff. So, the job cuts often fail to pay off, yet they continue. The young get hit first. One AI maker is funding the search for answers while asking the public to help foot the bill. The honest reading is that nobody, not the CEOs cutting jobs and not the ones promising to hire, knows yet where this AI makeover is heading. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The AI&Work Chronicle at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Wanting a human no longer protects customer service jobs; AI pays directors 62% more; India sheds 3,400 engineers off the books, senior roles down two in three; 1,115 fired daily, the AI-fluent stay

PwC released its 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer [https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2026/pwc-2026-ai-jobs-barometer.html] this morning, after studying more than one billion job ads across 27 countries. The finding is that the labor market is splitting into two tracks. One track holds what PwC calls “professionalised” roles, where AI handles the routine work and people get paid for judgment, creativity, and leadership. The other holds “democratised” roles, where AI makes the job simple enough that almost anyone can step in. The first track is growing faster in both hiring and pay. The second is falling behind. PwC found that the wage premium for AI skills climbed to 62%, up from 57% a year ago. In consumer-facing industries it now tops 100%. Stated plainly, a worker who can direct AI earns far more than a worker who competes against it. (A “wage premium” is the extra pay one group earns over another for the same kind of work.) Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] Companies that use AI well are hiring more people, not fewer. But the same report shows entry-level jobs dividing along the same line. AI-exposed entry roles now demand skills that used to belong to senior staff. Those roles grew 35% since 2019. Ordinary entry-level roles fell 10%. Newly-minted college grads are experiencing the reduction in entry-level jobs the hard way. Meanwhile, SHRM published its 2026 job-displacement report [https://www.shrm.org/mena/topics-tools/research/automation-generative-ai-and-job-displacement-risk-in-u-s--employment/2026-full-report] on June 12, and its surprising finding is that the share of American jobs at high risk of automation dropped from 6% to 5.1%. That is roughly 7.9 million jobs that look safer than they did a year ago. Task automation rose over the same stretch, yet the displacement risk fell. SHRM found that the “client preferences” barrier is weakening. That barrier is the simple fact that many customers want a human, not a machine. For years the preference protected call-center staff, receptionists, and support agents. The report points to Klarna, the company that replaced about 700 service workers with AI, then rehired humans after customers complained. SHRM’s data suggests customer tolerance for AI is now rising fast. PwC says AI rewards the workers who command it. SHRM says the customer resistance that once protected everyone else is thinning. Both point the same way. Protection is moving away from the job and toward the skill the worker brings to it. We see a similar trend in India. Active tech job openings there fell to a 28-month low of about 93,000 in early June, down from 119,000 in March [https://news.outsourceaccelerator.com/india-it-hiring-falls/]. Senior-level openings dropped 67% from a year earlier. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. Analysts now describe Indian tech hiring as “hyper-elastic,” meaning firms expand and shrink their workforces faster and harder than before. A worker who once counted on steady demand now faces a market that swings with every quarter. Indian tech powerhouses TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, and Tech Mahindra released an estimated 3,400 mid-tier engineers [https://www.ownyourcareer.in/blog/tech-layoffs-june-2026-india-impact-companies-still-hiring] in May and June, through performance-improvement exits and bench reductions. None of it showed up in formal layoff filings. Salesforce sent cuts into its India delivery teams under its “AI-first” reorganization. Intel ran a second round through its Bengaluru and Hyderabad offices. The shape matters more than the size. Mid-level engineers on non-AI teams are leaving. AI-fluent engineers are staying. BUY NOW [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/invasion_ai?_gl=1*g1iey2*_ga*OTc1NjU2NTcyLjE3NzQwMzA3NjM.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzQwMzMyMjUkbzIkZzEkdDE3NzQwMzQ2ODgkajYwJGwwJGgw]! Get the book that examines how the AI invasion already happened. You just weren’t invited. $9.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required. 2-hr reading time. Trackers of firings in America now count roughly 184,000 tech layoffs in 2026, about 1,115 a day across 247 events [https://skillsyncer.com/layoffs-tracker]. New names this week include Amdocs, which cut 2,900 jobs, many of them in Israel. Salesforce trimmed its Agentforce and Marketing Cloud teams. Google kept paring its Cloud division [https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/tech-layoffs/]. These cuts pile onto a known trend rather than break a new one. They confirm what the bigger reports describe. The question is no longer whether AI takes jobs. The question is which workers it pays and which it passes over. PwC measured the reward. SHRM measured the fading protection. India shows the sorting between AI-savvy and non-AI oriented workers in real time. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The salaries of workers learning to direct these tools are pulling ahead. The workers waiting for the old protections to hold are running short on time. Get full access to The AI&Work Chronicle at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The AI/Labor Report — Friday, 12 June 2026

Customer service is the largest single employment category in the American economy. It is also the one AI is targeting most directly, most publicly, and soonest. Forrester’s 2026 CX Outsourcing Report [https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/ai-will-eliminate-nearly-half-of-all-customer-service-jobs-by-2030/] projects that 49% of current customer service jobs will be gone by 2030. High-volume consumer contact centers face 80% AI containment within five years. Lower-volume B2B environments face roughly 70% containment because their cases require more judgment and less repetition. If AI handles eight or nine out of every ten contacts, the workforce required to handle the remainder looks very different from what exists today. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] Verizon illustrates how that process unfolds on the ground. Before CEO Dan Schulman announced the largest round of layoffs in Verizon’s history [https://www.thestreet.com/employment/verizon-ceo-cuts-to-the-chase-new-layoffs-ai-future], the company required customer service staff to participate in mandatory AI role-playing exercises. Sales representatives spent weeks interacting with an AI system the company described as a tool for improving customer service skills. A former employee reported that the sessions began six weeks before Schulman announced 13,000 job cuts [https://www.wirefly.com/news/report-verizon-employees-may-have-trained-ai-thats-replacing-them] and grew more intensive as the layoff date approached. Verizon said the training was not designed to gather replacement data. The timing made that statement difficult to accept at face value. The company has since confirmed a second round of cuts [https://memeburn.com/verizon-ai-will-replace-much-of-customer-service-in-2026/] scheduled for August 7 at its New Jersey headquarters, with no retraining programs announced for affected workers. Gartner has identified the pattern [https://www.metaintro.com/blog/ai-not-replacing-jobs-2026-data-gartner] clearly enough to project its next phase. A survey of 321 customer service leaders found that only 20% of companies actually reduced staffing because of AI, with most 2025 layoffs tied to federal policy changes and post-pandemic right-sizing instead. Gartner projects that half the companies that did cut workers for AI will rehire them by 2027, but under new job titles. The returning workers will manage and coach the AI systems that replaced their former colleagues. The job is the same conversation, at one remove, with a fraction of the original headcount. Gartner also projects [https://www.retellai.com/blog/will-ai-replace-call-center-agents] that conversational AI will reduce contact center labor costs by $80 billion in 2026, even though only one in ten agent interactions will actually be automated this year. The savings come not primarily from firing staff but from AI absorbing repetitive, high-volume contacts that currently drive 30 to 45% annual staff turnover across the industry. Companies do not need to announce layoffs to shrink. They simply stop replacing people who leave. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. The workers best positioned to survive this shift are those who have built genuine fluency with AI tools. Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index [https://smart-team.io/en/work-trend-index-2026-microsoft/], surveying 20,000 knowledge workers across 10 countries, found that only 19% of AI users operate in what Microsoft calls the Frontier Zone, where individual capability and organizational support reinforce each other. Ten percent are in a state of blocked agency: workers with genuine AI skills trapped inside organizations that have not updated their processes or incentives to put those skills to use. Only 13% say their organization explicitly rewards reinventing work with AI. Meanwhile, Google announced Thursday a $50 million commitment [https://www.axios.com/2026/06/11/google-trade-worker-initiative-ai] to train more than 300,000 skilled trade workers across the U.S., directing funds through 14 labor unions and four trade associations. The investment targets the electricians, fiber technicians, welders, and HVAC specialists needed to build and maintain AI data centers. Meta announced a $115 million training program for skilled trade workers earlier this week. Anthropic committed $150 million to a national fellowship program. An estimated 2.1 million skilled trades jobs could go unfilled nationally by 2030. The Trump administration’s immigration policies have accelerated the shortage, with construction jobs bearing the heaviest impact of any sector. The companies building the infrastructure that replaces service workers cannot find enough people to build the buildings that house it. BUY NOW [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/invasion_ai?_gl=1*g1iey2*_ga*OTc1NjU2NTcyLjE3NzQwMzA3NjM.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzQwMzMyMjUkbzIkZzEkdDE3NzQwMzQ2ODgkajYwJGwwJGgw]! Get the book that examines how the AI invasion already happened. You just weren’t invited. $9.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required. 2-hr reading time. The most authoritative counterargument to the Forrester projections comes from the OECD’s June 2026 Economic Outlook [https://fortune.com/2026/06/03/oecd-economic-outlook-scarring-effects-recession-ai-labour-displacement/], titled “Under Pressure.” The report found no signs of widespread labor displacement from AI at the industry level. Job vacancies in AI-exposed sectors grew faster than in other sectors. The primary constraint, the OECD argues, is a shortage of workers who can use AI rather than a surplus of workers it has replaced. Unemployment among workers aged 20 to 30 in AI-exposed roles, though, rose approximately 3 percentage points in 2025. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The aggregate numbers look stable because experienced workers are absorbing more output per person. The entry door for young workers trying to build careers in AI-exposed fields is closing. The OECD finds no widespread displacement. What it finds instead is a generation trying to get their first foothold in a labor market that is quietly pulling the ladder up. Get full access to The AI&Work Chronicle at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]