Corporate executives are increasingly resorting to doomsday language to warn of the destructive effects AI could have on tomorrow’s job market.
This summer, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that “AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs—and spike unemployment to 10–20% in the next one to five years.”
The CEO went on record to urge businesses and the government to “stop sugar-coating” the possible mass elimination of jobs across the economy. “We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming.”
Axios published his comments under the headline “AI jobs danger: Sleepwalking into a white-collar bloodbath.” Amodei’s warnings align with a frenzy across industries to replace human labor, they reported:
We’ve talked to scores of CEOs at companies of various sizes and across many industries. Every single one of them is working furiously to figure out when and how agents or other AI technology can displace human workers at scale. The second these technologies can operate at a human efficacy level, which could be six months to several years from now, companies will shift from humans to machines. This could wipe out tens of millions of jobs in a very short period of time.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that “AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs—and spike unemployment to 10–20% in the next one to five years.” / Image: TechCrunch, Wikimedia Commons
Earlier this year, the CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, said bluntly: “Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers.”
Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, the largest private employer in the country, likewise told The Wall Street Journal last month: “It’s very clear that AI is going to change literally every job . . . Maybe there’s a job in the world that AI won’t change, but I haven’t thought of it.”
McMillon announced a three-year hiring freeze while the company works out its plans for integrating AI. Walmart has cut 70,000 jobs since 2020. With over two million employees, the job-cutting has only begun.
America’s second-largest private employer, Amazon, which cut 41,000 jobs between 2022 and 2025, plans to eliminate up to 600,000 more via automation in the coming years, according to The New York Times. Internal company documents cite a goal of automating 75% of its operations.
Other major corporations have announced similar plans. UnitedHealth Group, the world’s largest health services company, is in the process of cutting 30,000 jobs and expects its AI-powered “Intelligent Virtual Assistant” system, “Optum,” to triage over half of its calls by the end of this year.
Salesforce replaced 4,000 workers with a single AI agent this year, cutting its staff by 45%. Meta has laid off 25,000 since 2022 and Microsoft laid off 15,000 this year alone. Intel, the recently bailed-out chip and hardware manufacturer, is expected to cut up to 34,000 jobs by the end of this year—20% of its workforce, including 15% of its factory workers.
Tech workers have been first in the line of fire, with 150,000 jobs cut across the sector last year. But other industries, including logistics, HR, and manufacturing, have al so cited tech tools as grounds for downsizing their payrolls. Nearly 90,000 retail jobs have been cut this year—a 203% increase in layoffs since 2024.
UPS is cutting 48,000 jobs this year—10% of its global workforce. The company claims that “leveraging our technology and increasing automation” allowed UPS to maintain the same delivery volumes per quarter “with three million fewer hours” of labor. They’re closing 73 facilities and automating 400 others to “reduce labor dependency.”
Starbucks is axing 2,000 corporate positions and shutting 1% of its coffee shops in North America. Southwest Airlines is slashing 15% of its corporate staff, Target is cutting 8%, and JP Morgan plans to cut 10% of its operations workforce. Geico Insurance, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, announced in May it has laid off 30,000.
That same month, Nissan announced that it would shutter seven factories and cut 20,000 jobs as a result of Trump’s tariffs. Despite promises from the White House to reindustrialize the country, US manufacturing has shed 89,000 jobs in the past year.
The World Economic Forum reported this year that 41% of corporations globally are planning to use AI to reduce their workforce. Last month, Bernie Sanders released a report claiming that approximately 100 million US jobs could be eliminated by AI within the next ten years.
The degree of AI-fueled job losses can’t be exactly predicted, and adoption remains relatively low across US companies. A more conservative estimate from Goldman Sachs predicts that 6–7% of US workers—over 10 million people—could lose their jobs as a result of widespread AI adoption. So even the more “optimistic” reports foresee big changes.
All told, nearly one million workers have been laid off so far this year. While AI and automation are driving job cuts, they are just one factor among the broader economic downturn and market unpredictability.
In a September survey of 1,000 business executives conducted by Resume.org, one in four said they have laid off employees this year. The same number said they plan to replace employees with AI next year, and six in ten businesses plan to cut jobs next year.
“Among companies that have cut back on hiring, the most common reason is economic uncertainty, cited by 63%. Tariffs and trade policy concerns follow at 38%, while 35% blame declining revenue. Another 22% say investments in AI are lowering their staffing needs.”
The largest energy monopolies are all downsizing, citing global instability and an unpredictable future for their market. Chevron plans to cut up to 20% of its global workforce—around 9,000 jobs—by the end of next year. ConocoPhillips, the third-largest oil producer in the US, is cutting up to a quarter of its workforce. BP also cut 7,700 jobs this year. Exxon Mobile is cutting 2,000 jobs—around 4% of its workforce.
“You can’t just take all these people and throw them on the street…” said JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. “You’ll have a revolution.” / Image: Steve Jurvetson, Flickr
A rationally planned economy would harness the power of tech and automation to shorten the workweek for everyone, freeing up time for leisure, education, and other activities. Under capitalism, this potential turns into its opposite with the threat of mass unemployment.
Increasingly, the capitalists see the dangerous consequences that could flow from this. “You can’t just take all these people and throw them on the street where the next job is, you know, making $30,000 a year when they were making $150,000,” said JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. “You’ll have a revolution.”
The RCA is actively preparing for it.