UnitedHealth Tracking if Workers Use AI Each Day; Meta Axes 20,000 this Week; Customer Service Jobs Down 130,000 in a Year; EU Workers Get Mandatory AI/Layoff Consultation Rights — US Workers Get None

Class of 2026 hits decade-high unemployment; PayPal cuts 4,760 for AI savings; Orgs pay AI layoff survivors more and employs fewer; California takes 180 days to study obvious AI worker disruptions

The Degree That Was Supposed to Protect You For most of the past three decades, the standard advice to American workers was direct: get a college degree, move into knowledge work, and stay ahead of the automation wave. That advice produced a generation of workers who did exactly what they were told. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York now reports [https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market] that the unemployment rate for recent college graduates reached 5.6% in March, one of the highest levels in a decade outside of the pandemic. The national unemployment rate stands at 4.3%. New graduates are now faring worse than the general population, a reversal of a pattern that held for thirty years. The Class of 2026 walked across their stages this month into a market that looks nothing like the one their advisors described when they enrolled four years ago. One Worker Who Lost His Job This Week Andrew Tran is 40 years old. He was a product designer at Meta. He lost his job this week [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ai-layoffs-hiring-entry-level-workers/], part of the 8,000-person cut the company executed after redirecting its labor budget toward AI infrastructure. Tran told CBS News he plans to find work at a company using AI “intentionally,” rather than as a tool for replacing workers. He said corporations “should have an obligation to retrain their workforces instead of throwing them to the curb.” Tran represents the demographic the data has been pointing at all year. He is educated, experienced, and employed in the kind of knowledge-work role that was supposed to be safe. He is also 40, which puts him in the age bracket Anthropic’s own labor market research [https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts] identifies as among the most AI-exposed. The workers the technology hits hardest are more likely to be female, over 40, more educated, and better paid than the workers people assumed would be first in line. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] PayPal Plans to Cut One in Five Workers Over the Next Three Years Yahoo Finance [https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/paypal-layoffs-ceo-cuts-20-154944985.html] reported that PayPal plans to cut roughly 4,760 workers over the next two to three years. That’s about 20% of its current staff level. PayPal processes payments for millions of American small businesses and independent contractors. The company’s new leadership frames the reduction as part of an AI-driven simplification of operations. Forrester identified earlier this year as a strategy for wage arbitrage dressed up as efficiency [https://www.forrester.com/report/workforce-ai-displacement-2026/]. That slow-burn layoff pattern is the version of displacement most likely to disappear inside the aggregate statistics. 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. California Just Became the First State to Order a Formal Response to AI Worker Displacement Governor Newsom signed Executive Order N-6-26 on May 21 [https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/05/21/governor-newsom-signs-first-of-its-kind-executive-order-to-prepare-workers-and-businesses-for-potential-ai-disruption/]. The order directs California state agencies to develop policies, gather data, and identify early warning signs of AI-driven workforce disruption. 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. It calls for recommendations within 180 days on updates to California’s WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) Act. WARN currently requires employers to notify workers of large layoffs 60 days in advance. The order also directs agencies to study severance standards, employment insurance, transition support, and worker ownership models. California Labor Federation’s President Lorena Gonzalez said the order is welcome but added that “it’s not enough to just study the issue, we have to take action now.” California is the state with the most AI companies, the most AI workers, and now the most visible political pressure on an executive who wants to run for president in 2028. AI and worker protections looks to be sizing up (along with data centers) to be a main plank of the Democratic Party in the run up to the 2028 Presidential election. California’s Legislature Passed the No Robo Bosses Act — The Same Bill Newsom Already Vetoed Two days before Newsom signed his executive order, the California Senate passed SB 947, the No Robo Bosses Act, 29-9 [https://sd05.senate.ca.gov/news/ca-senate-approves-no-robo-bosses-act-2026-ensure-human-oversight-ai-workplace]. The bill bars employers from relying solely on AI automated decision systems to fire or discipline workers and requires human oversight in termination decisions. The bill now moves to the state Assembly. Newsom vetoed a nearly identical version of this bill last fall. He cited concerns about overly broad restrictions on employers. The current version was revised to address those objections. The question of whether he signs or vetoes it a second time will determine whether the largest state economy produces any binding protection against automated termination decisions before the EU’s equivalent rules take effect in August. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Federal Reserve Data Shows What “Stable” Actually Means Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas research [https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0224] published this year finds that employment in AI-exposed sectors trails the broader economy while wages in those same sectors grow faster than the national average. Since fall 2022, national nominal wages rose 7.5%. Wages in the computer systems design sector rose 16.7% over the same period. So, AI is suppressing the number of workers employed while concentrating wage gains among those who remain. Fewer people share a larger total wage pool. The aggregate wage statistics look healthy. The employment statistics in AI-exposed sectors look different. Federal Reserve Bank of New York economists confirmed in May [https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/05/do-job-postings-show-early-labor-market-effects-of-ai/] that the effect is already visible in job posting data. Vacancy patterns between AI-exposed and non-exposed occupations are diverging. The signal appears in hiring before it appears in unemployment data. That means the official unemployment statistics are trailing the actual disruption by an unknown lag. The Same Pattern, 9,000 Miles Away A UPI report published Monday [https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/05/25/gig-economy-worker/5161779758231/] warns that approximately 40 million gig economy workers across Southeast Asia face AI-driven automation exposure with no meaningful social safety net in place. A McKinsey survey found two-thirds of major Southeast Asian companies have already fully adopted AI or are actively expanding its use. A speaker at a semiconductor conference in Kuala Lumpur last week said the automation trend “has become irreversible.” The 40 million figure describes workers doing the same kinds of tasks that American contractors, platform workers, and call center employees perform. They exist outside any formal employment relationship. They fall outside displacement tracking systems. They face no WARN Act, no severance study, and no executive order. They’re on their own. Get full access to The AI/Labor Report at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

OpenAI's founder walks back the job apocalypse; the layoff data disagrees with Altman; 370K cuts projected by year-end; trades hiring hard, four-year degree openings stalling harder

The Man Who Built the Fear of AI Is Now Walking It Back OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said this morning AI boom had produced no “jobs apocalypse.” He was speaking virtually at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia conference in Sydney. He said he had expected more entry-level white-collar jobs to be gone by now. He said his intuitions were “just off.” He said he was “delighted to be wrong.” Altman is the person most responsible for raising the alarm in the first place. His comments land at a specific moment, and that moment matters. On the same day, MIT Technology Review published a piece making a similar argument. Drawing on current Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the piece argues the unemployment rate for AI-exposed occupations is actually lower than for occupations with less AI exposure. Erika McEntarfer, who ran the BLS until the Trump administration fired her after a jobs report it found inconvenient, is quoted saying the evidence suggests AI’s labor market impact is “likely small right now.” She adds that “we have time to plan.” The timing of both statements on the same Tuesday is worth noting. The question worth sitting with is what they leave out. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] What the Numbers Actually Show As of May 18, more than 113,000 tech workers had lost jobs across 179 companies, at a pace of 825 layoffs per day since January 1. The companies doing the cutting simultaneously committed roughly $725 billion in capital expenditure this year, a 75% increase over 2025, almost entirely directed at AI data centers and infrastructure. That figure covers Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet alone. TrueUp, which tracks tech sector layoffs, projects the full-year 2026 total could reach 370,000. Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports nearly 50,000 job cuts explicitly linked to AI across all industries in 2026, representing about 17% of the 300,000 total job cuts announced so far this year. These are companies that cited AI as a stated reason for cuts in public documents and press releases. Altman himself acknowledged at the same Sydney conference that some companies are “AI washing,” using AI as a cover story for layoffs that would have happened anyway. That admission cuts both ways. It does suggest AI is blamed for cuts it did not cause. It also suggests companies find the explanation useful enough to use publicly. 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 aggregate unemployment rate looks stable, as McEntarfer says. But a new CNBC and SurveyMonkey survey finds that 53% of workers and 65% of students believe AI is already taking away entry-level job opportunities. Among tech workers specifically, 37% say AI makes their current job feel less secure. One in ten workers has already switched to a trade job or is actively planning to. An additional 24% of students say they think about making the switch sometimes. The headline numbers and the lived experience are telling different stories. Job postings on Handshake between July 2025 and March 2026 were down 2% compared to the same period the year before and down 12% from pre-pandemic levels. The Class of 2026 is graduating into a market that looks nothing like the one their college counselors described when they enrolled. 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 Labor Market Is Reorganizing Around Physical Presence A Randstad analysis of 50 million job postings finds that demand for robotic technicians grew 107% between 2022 and 2026. HVAC engineering vacancies grew 67%. Industrial automation technician openings grew 51%. These roles require physical presence. AI cannot perform them remotely. The reorganization follows a clear logic. AI absorbs the codifiable, desk-based tasks. It drives demand for the physical infrastructure that runs it. Workers whose skills keep them behind a screen face a suppressed hiring market. Workers whose skills put them in a building, a trench, or a data center floor face genuine labor shortages. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A case in point: AT&T plans to invest $38 billion over the next five years hiring and training blue-collar workers, mostly skilled fiber-network technicians, and its CEO says the company cannot find enough of them. Ford and Nvidia are making similar statements. Altman is correct that the aggregate statistics look stable. That observation describes the average. The average is covering two very different labor markets moving in opposite directions at the same time. Get full access to The AI/Labor Report at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Standard Charter CEO creates international incident with "lower-value human capital" quip, then explains he was right; 99% of CEOs expect layoffs; MIT says AI completes most text-based tasks by 2029

A Bank CEO Called His Employees “Lower-Value Human Capital.” Then He Apologized. Then He Explained That He Was Right. On Tuesday, May 19, Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters stood before investors at a briefing in Hong Kong and described his bank’s plan to cut nearly 8,000 jobs by 2030. The framing he chose was precise. Winters said [https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/2026/05/22/stanchart-ceo-apologizes-for-lower-value-human-comments/90216291007/] the cuts were not cost-cutting but rather “replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we’re putting in.” The reaction was immediate. Former Singapore President Halimah Yacob condemned the terminology publicly on Facebook, [https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/standard-chartered-ceo-apologizes-for-lower-value-human-comments-126052200844_1.html]calling it disturbing to describe workers in such clinical terms. Criticism spread across social media and through Standard Chartered’s key operating hubs in Singapore, Hong Kong, and India, where senior management and staff responded with visible anger. Asian regulators held discussions with the bank following the remarks. Winters sent a memo to staff on Wednesday saying the reporting was taken out of context and that affected workers would receive good advance notice. On Friday morning, Winters posted a fresh LinkedIn message doubling down on the substance of his remarks. Hours later he posted again, this time with an apology. “My choice of words has caused upset to some colleagues. For that I am sorry,” [https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/technology/2026/05/22/bill-winters-apology-standard-chartered-ai/] he wrote. He added that the bank would “continue to speak honestly about the impact of technological change.” Three days. One statement. Two reversals. The substance did not change between Tuesday and Friday. The framing did. Winters had said plainly what most corporate communications carefully avoid saying, that workers in certain roles are interchangeable inputs measured by the value they generate, and that AI inputs cost less. The backlash confirmed that workers understood exactly what he meant. HSBC Delivered the Same Message in Softer Language The day Winters sent his reassurance memo, HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery delivered his own communication to the bank’s 211,000 employees. The message was structurally identical to Winters’ but arrived in warmer packaging. Elhedery urged staff [https://allwork.space/2026/05/hsbc-tells-workers-not-to-fight-ai-while-admitting-its-destroying-banking-jobs/]to make sure they were not fighting the change, not disenfranchised, and not anxious or resisting. [https://allwork.space/2026/05/hsbc-tells-workers-not-to-fight-ai-while-admitting-its-destroying-banking-jobs/] He said AI could make them “more productive versions of themselves.” He also said, plainly, that generative AI will destroy certain jobs while creating new ones. HSBC is reviewing plans [https://www.aol.com/articles/dont-fight-ai-hsbc-ceo-104455000.html]to cut approximately 20,000 roles over the next three to five years, representing roughly 10 percent of its global workforce. The cuts target middle and back-office functions. The bank has appointed a Chief AI Officer and is using AI to reduce client onboarding time by 50 percent. Morgan Stanley analysts confirmed in the same week [https://www.resultsense.com/news/2026-05-21-hsbc-ceo-dont-fight-ai-bank-job-cuts/]that banking, technology, and professional services firms shed one in 20 staff in the past year as a direct result of AI adoption, with offshore workers and entry-level employees absorbing the largest share of those losses. The two largest London-listed Asia-focused banks made essentially the same announcement within 24 hours. Standard Chartered named the number and used the language that caused a diplomatic incident. HSBC named the number and chose its words more carefully. The outcome for the workers affected is the same. 99 Percent of CEOs Expect AI-Driven Layoffs Within Two Years The Standard Chartered and HSBC announcements did not arrive in isolation. Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 report [https://www.mercer.com/about/newsroom/mercer-s-global-talent-trends-2026-report/], drawing on surveys of nearly 12,000 executives, HR leaders, investors, and employees across 16 countries, found that 99 percent of CEOs expect corporate AI initiatives to lead to layoffs in the short term. Only 32 percent said they believed the workforce could optimally combine both human and machine capabilities. The worker side of the same survey is equally direct. Only 44 percent of employees reported thriving at work in 2026 [https://gizmodo.com/99-of-ceos-expect-ai-driven-layoffs-in-the-next-two-years-2000762994], down from 66 percent in 2024 and lower than during the COVID pandemic. Employee concern about job loss due to AI has risen from 28 percent in 2024 to 40 percent in 2026. A workforce operating at those anxiety levels cannot deliver the productivity gains executives are promising investors. That contradiction sits at the center of every AI transformation plan currently in motion. AI Is Now the Leading Stated Reason for U.S. Layoffs In April, AI led all stated reasons for U.S. job cuts [https://www.challengergray.com/blog/challenger-report-april-job-cuts-rise-38-from-march-ytd-cuts-down-50/]for the second consecutive month, with 21,490 announced layoffs attributed directly to AI. That represented 26 percent of all April cuts. AI has been cited for 49,135 job cut announcements so far in 2026, accounting for roughly 16 percent of all job cut plans year to date, per Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The Challenger data carries a specific limitation worth naming. It counts only layoffs in which companies voluntarily cite AI as the reason. It does not count roles eliminated through hiring freezes, contractor non-renewals, or restructurings where AI is the mechanism but not the stated cause. The actual displacement figure is larger than the Challenger number reflects. Researchers Are Now Naming the Anxiety Workers Feel Mercer’s research found that 62 percent of employees [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/20/ai-impacting-labor-market-like-a-tsunami-as-layoff-fears-mount.html] believe leaders underestimate AI’s emotional and psychological impact on workers. Only 19 percent of HR leaders consider those impacts as part of their digital implementation strategy. Researchers are now proposing a clinical term for the condition: AI Replacement Dysfunction, or AIRD, describing the specific anxiety pattern produced by working in a role you believe will be automated before you can leave it voluntarily. The Standard Chartered episode illustrates why that anxiety is grounded. A King’s College London study [https://www.resultsense.com/news/2026-05-21-hsbc-ceo-dont-fight-ai-bank-job-cuts/] released the same week found six in 10 Britons believe AI will eliminate more jobs than it creates, and one in five expect civil unrest as a result. Workers are not misreading the situation. They are reading the investor briefings. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. MIT Researchers: AI Will Complete 80-95 Percent of Text-Based Work Tasks by 2029 MIT FutureTech researchers [https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.01363] evaluated AI capabilities across more than 3,000 work tasks drawn from the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET database, drawing on more than 17,000 evaluations by actual workers in those roles. They found AI models successfully completing tasks that take humans three to four hours at a 50 percent success rate in mid-2024, rising to 65 percent by late 2025. If current capability growth continues, AI will complete most text-related tasks at an 80 to 95 percent success rate by 2029. That timeline covers the remaining working years of most people currently employed in the occupations Standard Chartered, HSBC, and the consulting firms discussed this week are actively reducing. The MIT assessment is not a prediction about a distant future. For the workers in those roles, 2029 is three performance review cycles away. Get full access to The AI/Labor Report at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

8,000 Meta workers wake up jobless; Bezos calls AI a bulldozer, not a threat; Pew says workers unimpressed with AI; Upwork fires humans; pharma layoffs soar; fewest S&P jobs since 2016

In Today’s News Meta Fired 8,000 People Yesterday, From 4am Onward Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Tries To Sell The Wonders Of AI Pew Research Says Most Americans Dislike The Idea Of AI Upwork Cuts A Quarter Of Its Human Labor S&P 500 Employed Fewer Staff In 2025 Than In 2016 Pharma On A Layoff Spree Meta Layoffs Yesterday morning, Meta began executing the largest single-day workforce reduction in its history [https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/5/20/meta-cuts-8000-jobs-in-sweeping-global-layoffs]. Notifications went out at 4 a.m. local time, rolling across time zones from Singapore to Europe to the United States. By the end of the day, 8,000 people had lost their jobs, 6,000 open positions had been cancelled, and 7,000 remaining workers had been redirected into newly created AI-focused units. The specific teams cut first tell you something about the company’s strategy going forward. Workers on Meta’s integrity team, the group responsible for removing hate speech and malicious content, were among the first to go [https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2026/5/20/meta-cuts-8000-jobs-in-sweeping-global-layoffs]. So were members of the cybersecurity team and the content design division. Meta had already moved in March to replace third-party contractors handling content moderation with AI systems. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] The May 20 layoffs formalized what the March contractor transition had already begun. The workers who kept the platforms safe from manipulation are now the workers AI displaced first. Zuckerberg’s memo to staff that morning read: “Success isn’t a given” in the AI era. [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/meta-layoffs-zuckerberg-says-success-isnt-a-given-in-memo.html] Meta’s CFO told investors during the Q1 earnings call that executives “don’t really know what the optimal size of the company will be in the future.” That admission came from a company in the middle of cutting 10 percent of its workforce and committing up to $145 billion in capital spending this year, most of it on AI infrastructure. The total displacement at Meta since 2022 now stands at roughly 25,000 workers. More cuts are planned for the second half of 2026. Jeff Bezos Went on CNBC the Same Morning While Meta’s notifications were going out, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/jeff-bezos-taxes-ai-corporations-trump.html] and told viewers that workers worried about AI displacement are “dead wrong.” “If you’ve been digging out a basement for your house with a shovel and somebody’s about to hand you a bulldozer, you should be so happy,” [https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-tells-workers-to-be-so-happy-theyre-being-given-the-gift-of-ai-2000761413] Bezos said. He predicted that AI will produce so much productivity and economic abundance that the real problem will be a labor shortage, not unemployment. He added that housing will get cheaper, food will get cheaper, and that households with two earners will voluntarily see one person leave the workforce. Asked directly whether Amazon has laid off workers due to AI, Bezos said there have been no AI-related layoffs at the company [https://www.benzinga.com/markets/tech/26/05/52698076/jeff-bezos-says-ai-isnt-taking-all-the-jobs-theres-going-to-be-a-labor-shortage]. Amazon has cut at least 30,000 workers since October 2025. 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 timing of the interview and the layoffs was not coordinated. That makes it more instructive, not less. The same morning that thousands of workers learned by email that their jobs were gone, the founder of one of the largest employers in America described the situation as a gift. Nevertheless, an October 2025 New York Times article cites that Amazon expects to sell roughly twice as many products by 2033, yet its internal robotics team aims to avoid hiring more than 600,000 U.S. workers who would otherwise be needed to handle that volume. In other words, Amazon is describing jobs that will never be created, not jobs being eliminated from existing workers. A Pew Research Center survey cited in coverage of the Bezos interview found that half of U.S. adults are more concerned than excited about AI [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/20/jeff-bezos-taxes-ai-corporations-trump.html]. Among employed workers specifically, 52 percent say they feel worried about the future impact of AI in the workplace, 33 percent feel overwhelmed, and 32 percent believe AI will lead to fewer job opportunities for them long-term [https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2025/02/25/workers-views-of-ai-use-in-the-workplace/]. The workers in that survey are not describing an abstract future. They are describing the labor market they are already in. Upwork Cuts a Quarter of Its Workforce. Its Product Is Human Labor. On May 7, Upwork CEO Hayden Brown announced the company would cut roughly 25 percent of its workforce [https://officechai.com/ai/upwork-lays-off-25-of-its-workforce-says-ai-will-lead-to-smaller-teams/], writing in a memo to employees: “Two pizza teams are dead. AI means smaller, differently resourced teams in product and engineering can make a bigger impact than ever.” Upwork is a marketplace that exists to connect businesses with freelance human workers. The platform is now cutting its own human staff while routing more work through AI agents. The company’s stock fell 19 percent on the announcement. Upwork’s CEO framed the cuts as structural, not cyclical, built around the premise that AI permanently reduces the number of people needed to produce a given output. Coinbase, PayPal, Cloudflare, Freshworks, and Block all announced similar double-digit cuts in the same two-week window [https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/layoffs-accelerate-may-2026-firms-040430218.html], each citing AI efficiency as the primary driver. The pattern across the cohort is consistent: companies with flat-to-rising revenue are using AI as the stated reason for headcount reductions, not weak demand. The S&P 500 Employed Fewer People in 2025 Than in 2016 The layoffs at Upwork, Meta, and the May cohort are not isolated decisions. S&P 500 total headcount fell in 2025 for the first time since 2016 [https://layoffhedge.com/company/upwork], with the combined workforce of America’s largest public companies dropping by roughly 400,000 workers and ending eight consecutive years of employment growth. 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 companies that define American corporate employment are collectively employing fewer people. Despite a growing economy and record capital spending, humans are mere collateral to be shed. The capital is going up into AI infrastructure. The headcount is going down. Biopharma Layoffs Are Up 24 Percent Year Over Year Biopharma companies cut 14,167 workers in the first four and a half months of 2026 [https://www.biospace.com/job-trends/takeda-cuts-send-layoffs-soaring-in-may-rising-year-over-year], up 24 percent from the same period in 2025. Takeda Pharmaceutical’s 4,500-person reduction drove much of the increase. 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 biopharma sector employs large numbers of administrative, operational, and support workers who have no particular reason to identify with the tech layoff narrative. They are in it anyway. Fifty-two biopharma companies made cuts in the first four and a half months of 2026, compared to 114 in the same period of 2025 [https://www.biospace.com/job-trends/takeda-cuts-send-layoffs-soaring-in-may-rising-year-over-year]. Fewer companies are cutting, but each cut is larger. The layoff wave is consolidating into bigger, more deliberate restructurings, the kind that reflect strategic decisions rather than quarterly belt-tightening. The picture across all of these stories is the same one the Bureau of Labor Statistics data confirmed last Friday. The headline economy looks stable. Underneath the headline, though, the sectors where most workers actually earn their living are contracting. The companies doing the contracting are reporting that this is the plan. More Stories Production support from Eleven Labs Get full access to The AI/Labor Report at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

UnitedHealth Tracking if Workers Use AI Each Day; Meta Axes 20,000 this Week; Customer Service Jobs Down 130,000 in a Year; EU Workers Get Mandatory AI/Layoff Consultation Rights — US Workers Get None

Eight Thousand Jobs Disappear at Meta Tomorrow. Federal Data Shows the Pattern Runs Far Deeper. Wednesday morning, Meta begins cutting roughly 8,000 employees [https://thenextweb.com/news/meta-layoffs-may-2026-ai-restructuring-thousands], or 10 percent of its global workforce. The company is also cancelling plans to fill 6,000 open roles it had already posted. That is 14,000 fewer jobs at a single company in a single week. Meta has signaled more rounds are coming in the second half of the year. The stated reason is the same one you have heard all year: the company needs to redirect money toward AI infrastructure. It would be easy to read this as a story about one technology giant. Federal data published Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-15/us-is-starting-to-see-heavy-job-losses-in-roles-exposed-to-ai] makes clear the story runs much wider than that. The Government’s Own Numbers Now Show the Displacement According to Bloomberg [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-15/us-is-starting-to-see-heavy-job-losses-in-roles-exposed-to-ai], a group of 18 occupations the BLS identifies as exposed to AI. Data shows 10 million workers lost employment between May 2024 and May 2025 [https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/us-starting-to-witness-heavy-job-losses-in-occupations-exposed-to-ai-126051600082_1.html]. Those 18 occupations fell 0.2 percent while overall employment rose 0.8 percent. That gap of one full percentage point is the distance between the economy workers live in and the economy the headlines describe. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] The workers absorbing the biggest losses hold everyday service and office roles. Customer service representatives lost 130,180 jobs, a 4.8 percent drop in a single year. Secretaries and administrative assistants outside medical, legal, and executive offices fell 1.8 percent. Wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives fell 2.3 percent. Since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, credit authorizers and checkers are down 26.2 percent, broadcast announcers and radio disc jockeys down 20.8 percent, and sales engineers down 13.2 percent [https://www.dailyherald.com/20260516/nation-and-world/us-is-starting-to-see-heavy-job-losses-in-roles-exposed-to-ai/]. These are roles that exist in every mid-sized American city. The BLS data confirms what many workers in these fields have been experiencing directly: their occupations are contracting while the broader job market expands around them. Goldman Sachs Identifies the Mechanism: It Starts With Job Postings, Not Layoffs On Thursday, Goldman Sachs economists published a report [https://www.dailyherald.com/20260516/nation-and-world/us-is-starting-to-see-heavy-job-losses-in-roles-exposed-to-ai/] that explains how displacement happens before it appears in unemployment statistics. Occupations highly exposed to AI substitution have seen job openings fall below pre-pandemic levels. Occupations where AI augments workers have seen openings fall more gradually. 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. That means that when a company stops posting for customer service or administrative coordinator positions, those jobs do not appear in layoff announcements. They generate no WARN Act filings and no press releases. They disappear because the company simply stops hiring. The worker whose contract ends, whose temp assignment concludes, or whose entry-level role goes unfilled after a colleague leaves is not counted in the unemployment rate. The role simply disappears. What Meta Is Actually Doing Meta’s cuts beginning Wednesday touch teams across Reality Labs, the Facebook social division, recruiting, sales, and global operations. California WARN Act filings confirm cuts at Meta’s Burlingame and Sunnyvale offices [https://thenextweb.com/news/meta-layoffs-may-2026-ai-restructuring-thousands], with the majority of the 8,000 positions spread across the company’s global workforce. Mark Zuckerberg has said AI will write four times more code than human engineers at Meta this year. [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/24/20k-job-cuts-at-meta-microsoft-raise-concern-of-ai-labor-crisis-.html] The company is spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on capital expenditures in 2026, most of it on AI infrastructure. Meta is cutting workers to fund systems currently being built to replace the work those workers perform. UnitedHealth Is Now Tracking Whether Workers Use AI Each Day This past Friday, Bloomberg described [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-15/unitedhealth-tracks-workers-ai-use-in-push-to-transform-company] what comes just before the cuts at companies still in the adoption phase. UnitedHealth Group is monitoring whether some workers in its Optum division perform at least one AI query per day, using tools such as ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. The company has an internal engagement dashboard tracking usage, training completion, and what it calls “adoption gaps.” 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. When AI use becomes a measurable daily metric, it quickly becomes a performance criterion. The question workers at any large employer should ask is direct: if your company tracks whether you use AI tools often enough, what happens to the workers who use them less? The answer to that question is likely what drives the next round of staffing decisions. In America, Workers Displaced by AI Have Almost No Legal Recourse Bloomberg reported [https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/statehouse-ai-job-loss-solutions-range-from-punitive-to-positive] last week that the legal framework protecting American workers from AI-driven displacement is thin to the point of nonexistence. There is no federal law requiring companies to disclose that a layoff was caused by AI adoption. State responses range from robot taxes under consideration in New York to skills grants in New Jersey and Utah [https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/statehouse-ai-job-loss-solutions-range-from-punitive-to-positive]. Illinois and Oregon are looking into protections for specific occupations. No comprehensive federal framework exists. The contrast with Europe is jarring. The EU AI Act reached a political agreement on May 7. [https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai] Transparency rules take effect in August 2026. Employers operating across EU member states face mandatory consultation with worker representatives before deploying AI systems with significant employment consequences. American workers facing the same technologies have a patchwork of limited state-level options and nothing equivalent on the federal level. Why the Official Statistics Miss What Workers Are Experiencing The Budget Lab at Yale published research [https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/ai-probably-not-yet-reason-labor-market-weakening] on May 7 there is no statistically clear AI-driven effect on unemployment in current federal data, even using methods that compare AI-exposed and unexposed occupations directly. Headline unemployment and layoff rates look stable. So why do employment numbers over all look stable? Workers displaced from AI-exposed roles are often contractors whose assignments end without notice, gig workers whose platforms reduce volume, or employees who accept early-exit packages that do not register as layoffs. The unemployment insurance system counts people who lose W-2 jobs. It was not built to count the structural narrowing of hiring pipelines that Goldman Sachs documented this week. The BLS data, the Goldman Sachs report, the Meta layoffs, and the Yale analysis describe the same economy from four different angles. The headline numbers look stable. The sectors where millions of service and office workers earn their living are contracting. The legal structures that might slow that contraction do not exist in the United States. And companies that have not yet cut are already measuring how often their employees use the tools that will eventually make those cuts possible. Eight thousand people at Meta learn this Wednesday whether they still have jobs. Some how, some way, the employment numbers will remain level, unflinching. Get full access to The AI/Labor Report at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]