No AI Job Crisis Yet — But the Data Is Fighting the Headlines

Apollo Global Management's chief economist Torsten Sløk is pushing back hard against AI doom narratives, arguing that current employment data shows zero evidence of AI-driven job losses. Citing the ADP National Employment Report — which found private companies added roughly 110,000 jobs in April alone — Sløk contends that the AI spending boom is actually inflating both employment and wages, particularly for workers with AI skills. Companies are hiring AI implementation experts, and the data center buildout is pushing up salaries and driving demand for semiconductors, equipment, and energy.

Sløk frames the dynamic through the lens of the Jevons paradox: the economic principle holding that when technology makes a resource cheaper and more efficient, total consumption of that resource actually rises rather than falls. Applied to labor, his argument is that cheaper AI tools will generate more economic activity and ultimately more jobs, not fewer. He made a similar case in April, writing that cheaper inputs historically expand industries rather than shrink them.

The optimistic read has found prominent supporters. Box CEO Aaron Levie, Dell CEO Michael Dell, White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon have all echoed Sløk's view publicly in recent days. An EY survey of 240 financial services CEOs adds some institutional weight — roughly 60% expect AI investment to maintain or grow their headcounts in 2026.

But the macro data sits in uncomfortable tension with company-level decisions. At least a dozen major firms have explicitly cited AI as a driver of layoffs this year. Block's Jack Dorsey announced plans to slash his workforce from over 10,000 to under 6,000, framing it as a deliberate, immediate response to AI-enabled leaner operations. Cisco, Atlassian, Cloudflare, Coinbase, IBM, and Snap have made similar attributions. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has blasted this framing as lazy, and Sam Altman has called it "AI washing" — using AI as a convenient cover story for cuts that would have happened anyway. The gap between aggregate employment statistics and individual company behavior remains one of the thorniest questions in the AI economic debate.