Latest / Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts / 99% of CEOs Expect AI-Driven Layoffs Within Two Years
Transcript
- 0:00[Host] This is Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts — where a ninety-nine percent consensus is still called a forecast. Gizmodo reported yesterday that Mercer's 2026 Global Talent Trends survey, covering sixteen hundred C-suite leaders across seventeen countries, found ninety-nine percent expect AI-driven layoffs within two years.
- 0:15[Guest] Not "might reshape the workforce." Ninety-nine percent. And Mercer's breakdown is specific. Financial services and technology firms lead the planned cuts, with professional services close behind. The roles targeted first are early-career positions doing routine, repeatable tasks.
- 0:28[Host] So the generation told "learn to code" is watching code write itself. Who exactly is getting displaced?
- 0:34[Guest] Junior analysts, first-year associates, administrative coordinators. The entry-level pipeline companies used to staff with recent grads. What stood out in Mercer's data: only twelve percent of surveyed firms have a formal reskilling plan tied to these cuts. The rest are planning subtraction without replacement.
- 0:50[Host] And the layoff data already caught up to the sentiment. Challenger, Gray and Christmas tracked March 2026 layoffs and AI was the number one cited reason for cuts for the first time in their history. Fifteen thousand jobs in one month, triple February's number.
- 1:05[Guest] Young workers can feel it. Graduate surveys this year put it starkly — eighty-nine percent of the 2026 class believe AI will eliminate their job before they even land one, up twenty-five points in a single year. Handshake data makes it concrete: entry-level postings dropped sixteen percent while applications per opening jumped twenty-six percent. Fewer doors, longer lines.
- 1:26[Host] Hold on though. Every wave of automation triggers this exact panic. ATMs didn't kill bank tellers, spreadsheets didn't kill accountants. Why should we believe this time is different?
- 1:36[Guest] Because the displacement speed outpaces the replacement speed by an order of magnitude. A Dallas Fed working paper, "Artificial Intelligence and the Decline of Entry-Level Employment," found workers aged twenty-two to twenty-five in AI-exposed occupations saw a thirteen percent employment decline since 2022. Software developers in that bracket dropped nearly twenty percent from their late-2022 peak. ATMs took decades to reshape banking — this took three years.
- 1:59[Host] Alright, so the doors are closing on one side. But somewhere money is still being spent — these same firms are hiring AI talent by the truckload. Where does Mercer's own data say those replacement jobs actually land, and can a displaced twenty-two-year-old even reach them?
- 2:15[Guest] That's the structural mismatch. Seventy-seven percent of new AI-related roles in Mercer's survey require a Master's degree — and only thirteen percent of American adults have one. The industries cutting fastest, finance and tech, are also the ones posting the most AI-specialist roles. Same companies, completely different talent pool.
- 2:33[Host] So the cost isn't just borne by twenty-two-year-olds.
- 2:36[Guest] It circulates. Fifty-seven percent of Gen Z already hold a side gig, the highest of any generation. They're diversifying income because they've stopped trusting any single employer to keep them. When millions of early-career workers can't get a foothold, you lose your future leadership pipeline and your consumer base contracts.
- 2:53[Host] That feedback loop is what Patrick Deglon calls the Labor Cliff in Unscarcity. Not a forecast anymore. Corporate policy with a two-year countdown.
- 3:01[Guest] For more on the Labor Cliff and the entry-level squeeze, head to unscarcity dot ai. The book is on Amazon, the audiobook is on Spotify. This has been Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts.