Goldman Sachs tracks job losses from AI and warns of falling demand

Goldman Sachs began tracking monthly how many jobs disappear due to AI and how many return thanks to tools that augment people rather than replace them. The first figures look alarming: automation is already delivering a steady net loss in employment, and behind it looms a more uncomfortable question — what will happen to demand if more and more people have less money.

What the numbers show

According to Goldman Sachs' assessment, each month approximately 25 thousand jobs disappear due to direct replacement of humans by AI. Part of the losses is compensated by "labor augmentation" models, where an employee is not laid off but receives tools that speed up their work. But the scale of compensation remains noticeably lower: only about 9 thousand positions return.

As a result, the economy faces a net reduction of approximately 16 thousand jobs per month. If translated to a year, that comes out to about 192 thousand net losses. This is no longer one-time reshuffles within individual companies, but a recurring stream of cuts that can be tracked as a separate macroeconomic indicator.

Particularly important is that we're talking not about forecasts for the distant future, but about monthly dynamics that banks and researchers are already seeing right now. In other words, labor market changes are becoming systemic rather than episodic.

• 25,000 jobs disappear due to direct automation
• 9,000 positions return through "labor augmentation"
• Net reduction is 16,000 jobs per month
• Translated to a year, that's about 192,000 losses
• CFOs expect up to 502,000 layoffs due to AI in 2026

Surveys of CFOs cited by NBER and the Federal Reserve add an even sharper layer to this data. According to their expectations, as many as 502 thousand jobs could disappear due to AI in 2026 alone. For comparison, throughout all of 2025, 55 thousand such layoffs were recorded. If these estimates hold true, we're talking not about a smooth transition, but about an almost ninefold acceleration.

The problem isn't robots

Typically, the conversation about AI-driven job cuts boils down to efficiency: businesses cut costs, processes become faster, margins grow. But this logic has a weak point. Salary is not only a company expense but also someone's future spending in the economy. A person who has been replaced spends less on housing, food, transportation, subscriptions, education, and electronics. For one firm, this is savings; for the whole system, it's a contraction in purchasing power.

If you eliminate workers, who will buy everything you're selling?

This question sounds particularly sharp against the backdrop of another trend: money and income are concentrating at the top. According to data from the first part of the series, 21.5 trillion dollars have been concentrated in seven companies, and capital income has grown 12 times faster than wages. This means the benefits of automation go not to where they turn back into mass consumption, but to where they more often settle in assets and financial instruments.

Where the balance shifts

The very idea of "labor augmentation" shows that AI doesn't have to be a job-cutting machine. In many roles, the model can remove routine work, speed up analysis, prepare drafts, assist with customer support, or help with information retrieval. But for this, a company must deliberately build processes around the employee, not around their replacement. So far, though, the numbers suggest that the replacement scenario is developing faster than the supplementation scenario, especially in typical office functions.

For business, this creates a double risk. In the short term, cuts do improve reporting. But in the medium term, they can hit the market, especially in sectors dependent on mass consumers. If AI increases productivity but simultaneously decreases aggregate household income, the economy gets a paradox: production becomes easier while selling becomes harder. And this gap can grow even when the companies themselves are temporarily winning on profit.

What it means

The AI story goes beyond HR and corporate efficiency. If automation continues to eliminate jobs faster than it creates new roles and augments existing ones, the main constraint for business will no longer be supply but demand. In other words, companies will have more and more ways to produce and fewer and fewer customers who can afford it. This is no longer just a question of technology, but of the sustainability of the entire consumer economy.