This past year has been pretty rough for layoffs — and you can thank AI for that, at least in part.
According to a report by CNBC citing consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI was responsible for nearly 55,000 layoffs in the U.S. in 2025. This comes during a year that had the highest number of layoffs since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, with 1.17 million job cuts across the country, the consulting firm also reported.
In November alone 71,000 jobs were cut — and 6,000 of those, or about 9 percent, were due to AI.
While AI-focused layoffs hit workers across a wide range of employment statuses and ages at companies like Amazon and Walmart, Inc reported that AI has led to a hiring hiring freeze that has hit workers at the entry level particularly hard.
“The rise in youth unemployment might actually be a symptom of the rise in AI,” Stephanie Roth, chief economist at Wolfe Research, told Inc. “It’s not even that AI is doing the job for these people, but companies have uncertainty about the direction of travel and they want to preserve optionality [by not hiring young people].”
All the while, Fortune reported that AI-fueled finance jobs taking over human jobs is predominately “smoke and mirrors” for now.
No matter how you look at it, this was a tough year for U.S. workers — and AI reportedly played a role.
