Fear about AI and jobs has become harder to separate from the steady stream of layoff announcements. Each new round of cuts adds weight to the concern that automation will shrink opportunities faster than the labor market can replace them.
But the picture is not as simple as job losses on one side and new technology on the other. A recent report from Ramp and Revelio Labs suggests that, at some companies, heavier AI spending is showing up alongside faster hiring, including in the junior roles often seen as most exposed.
The layoff story is still real
The anxiety around AI-related job loss has a factual basis. Through May of 2026, companies announced that close to 90,000 job cuts were tied to AI. By some accounts, up to 15% of U.S. jobs are projected to be eliminated by AI over the next five years.
Those figures help explain why broad promises from the tech industry have not done much to calm workers. Saying that AI will create new jobs is a different thing from showing where those jobs will appear, who will get them, and whether they will arrive in time for people entering the workforce now.
The pressure is especially sharp for the generation approaching graduation. The central question is not abstract. It is whether employers will still be hiring for the kinds of entry-level work that traditionally help people build careers.
What the Ramp and Revelio Labs report found
The report from Ramp and Revelio Labs complicates the gloomier version of the AI jobs debate. Ramp tracks enterprise AI spend, while Revelio Labs tracks workforce records from nearly 22,000 companies.
According to the report, companies spending heavily on AI grew headcount faster. The report describes “high-intensity adopters” as firms that spend on average $30 per employee per month on AI in the first three months. Those companies saw headcount increase 10.2%.
The gains were not limited to a single department. Headcount rose across engineering, sales, administration, customer service, finance, marketing, and scientist roles. The strongest job growth among high-intensity adopters appeared in the information sector, which includes software, internet, media, and tech-adjacent firms.
The report also challenges the idea that AI is wiping out all junior opportunities. Recent research from Goldman Sachs found that AI has already erased about 16,000 net jobs per month over the past year, with Gen Z and entry-level workers taking the brunt of the burden. Yet in tech-forward firms, the Ramp and Revelio Labs report found that entry-level headcount rose by 12%.
Why the data needs caution
The findings do not mean AI automatically creates jobs. The data skews toward tech-forward, knowledge-work firms. These companies may already have the momentum, capital, or market position to keep hiring regardless of AI.
That makes causality difficult. AI spending may be helping companies expand. Or it may simply be more common at firms that were already growing quickly. The report itself is careful on this point.
“This paper does not show that AI universally creates jobs,” the paper’s authors admit, “but it does counter claims that AI will lead to broad job losses.”
That distinction matters. The report does not erase the layoffs, and it does not prove that every employer will hire more after adopting AI. It does show that the relationship between AI adoption and employment is more varied than a simple replacement story.
AI as a tool for expansion
One useful takeaway is that AI may not always be used only to substitute for labor. In some firms, it may support expansion by making certain core workflows cheaper or faster.
The report points specifically to software and technology firms. In those companies, AI can affect tasks such as writing code, debugging, building internal tools, producing technical documentation, and supporting product development.
“For software and technology firms, AI can make core output cheaper or faster to produce: writing code, debugging, building internal tools, producing technical documentation, and supporting product development,” the report reads. “Lower production costs in these workflows can raise the return to expanding the whole firm, not just the engineering team.”
In plain terms, if a company can produce more efficiently, it may choose to grow the business rather than simply reduce staff. That could explain why headcount rose across multiple functions among high-intensity adopters, rather than only in engineering.
But the report draws a line between sustained investment and surface-level experimentation. Companies that buy subscriptions and run pilots, but do not continue into sustained investments, do not tend to see headcount gains, according to the report.
The gap between AI adopters may widen
The report points toward a divide between companies that can turn AI spending into business gains and companies that remain stuck in experimentation. The difference is not just access to AI tools. It is the ability to integrate those tools into real work.
The source identifies resources such as capital, technical staff, founder networks, and management bandwidth as advantages that may help firms benefit from AI adoption. Companies that already have those channels may be better positioned to convert AI into growth.
That creates a more complicated outlook for the labor market. AI may contribute to job cuts in some places while supporting expansion in others. The effect may depend heavily on the kind of firm, the depth of investment, and whether AI becomes part of how the business actually operates.
“Firms without those channels may fall behind.”
The AI jobs debate is therefore messier than a single headline can capture. Close to 90,000 job cuts tied to AI through May of 2026 are not easy to dismiss. But neither is evidence that high-intensity AI adopters saw headcount rise, including in entry-level roles.
For workers, graduates, and employers, the practical question is shifting. It is no longer only whether AI eliminates jobs. It is also which companies can use AI to expand, which ones cannot, and how uneven that transition may become.