Culture Office

Adecco: Relax, AI isn't ending jobs — it's rearranging them

Zurich, July 23 — Robots aren't coming for your job en masse, according to the world's biggest staffing firm. Adecco Group's new report pushes back hard against "AI apocalypse" fears, arguing the technology is reshuffling work, not wiping it out.

The timing is pointed. Just this month, Microsoft trimmed roughly 2% of its workforce, joining HSBC, Amazon, and Standard Chartered in a fresh round of AI-fueled layoffs. Meanwhile, outplacement tracker Challenger, Gray & Christmas pins nearly a quarter of 2026's U.S. job cuts on AI.

Adecco CEO Denis Machuel isn't buying all of it. He suspects some companies are quietly using AI as a convenient scapegoat for cuts that are really about poor performance or restructuring. His verdict: this is evolution, not extinction — a shift in tasks and roles rather than a wave of eliminated jobs.

The numbers back him up, for now. More than three years since ChatGPT's debut, employment across the OECD's 38 member countries sits at record highs with unemployment near historic lows. Machuel draws a parallel to steam power, electricity, and the internet — each reshaped work without triggering mass destruction of jobs, and he sees no sign AI is writing a different script.

The one soft spot: entry-level office roles, which he says are genuinely exposed. But his fix isn't to gut them — it's to redesign them so AI becomes a collaborator rather than a replacement, backed by serious investment in upskilling and reskilling before the junior talent pipeline dries up.

Bottom line: Adecco's message to panicked headlines — slow down. This is a remix, not a requiem.