Mass job cuts begin in US professions exposed to AI

For the second year in a row, the US is seeing significant job cuts in professions considered vulnerable to artificial intelligence. Customer service representatives, secretaries and some categories of salespeople lead the list of those affected.

Who lost their jobs

The cuts are uneven. Customer service representatives are leaving the workforce fastest. These are the professionals who answer incoming calls, emails and chats, resolve standard problems and look up information in databases. Modern AI systems can do exactly the same, often faster and cheaper.

Secretarial staff are losing ground faster the more routine their work is. Drafting letters, scheduling meetings, managing calendars, archiving documents: AI assistants already take care of all of it.

Salespeople are losing positions more slowly than customer service staff, but the trend is clearly downward. Initial contact with customers, first-line information and even basic product demos are already handled by AI systems.

• Handling incoming calls and chats
• Preparing business letters and documents
• Answering frequently asked questions
• Scheduling meetings and managing calendars
• Initial qualification of potential customers

Why AI is displacing workers faster

AI is improving exponentially. Three years ago you could object that the system does not understand context, misses nuance and makes errors. Today those arguments are weakening. Modern models handle most routine work better than the average employee.

Company economics are shifting. An employee's salary is a fixed expense, plus taxes, plus management. An AI service subscription is a variable expense, with no long-term commitments and the ability to scale. At a certain volume of work, AI becomes cheaper.

The third factor is competition. If your company hires people for routine tasks and a competitor has adopted AI, you will lose on price. That puts pressure even on conservative companies.

What happens next

This is not an American phenomenon. The same cuts are visible in Europe and Asia, although the statistics are less clear. The wave will also reach more complex roles once AI learns to optimize analytics, prototyping and design.

Who is losing their job today? People whose careers were built on performing standardized tasks. The main protection against displacement is either to move into higher-level functions (strategy, relationship management) or to learn to work with AI as a tool and build it into your workflow.

We are seeing not the end of professions, but the end of routine

within professions.

Such retraining takes time and education. Companies should invest in reskilling. People need to be more flexible. Society should prepare for large-scale retraining in new segments.

What this means

The cuts are not just lost jobs; they signal the economy's move to a new level of automation. Professions will not disappear, but they will change. Customer service will remain, but it will be about handling exceptions, not processing routine.

If you work in one of these professions, plan the evolution of your role now. If you hire people, prepare for routine costs to drop sharply, while demand grows for people who can manage that routine and check its quality.