In today’s tech economy, the loudest question is whether artificial intelligence will trigger a wave of layoffs. But at YourNewsClub, we observe a very different mechanism at work. AI is not pushing employees out of existing roles – it is restructuring how roles come into existence in the first place. The real disruption isn’t dismissal. It’s absence. Positions don’t get cut. They simply stop being created.
Salesforce became one of the few companies to openly admit this new operational logic. Its AI agent, Agentforce, reduced support ticket load to such an extent that the company no longer needs to open new support engineer positions. No one was fired – they just stopped hiring. Existing employees were reallocated into higher-value segments like consulting, sales and client strategy. The role did not vanish overnight – it diffused into more profitable operational layers.
Klarna illustrated the same trajectory with sharper numbers. Co-founder Sebastian Siemiatkowski stated that the company went from 5,500 to 3,000 employees in two years, but insisted that “not a single layoff happened because of AI.” And yet, hiring was frozen almost entirely. As AI agents absorbed analytical and client-side tasks, teams weren’t dismantled – they were left to shrink by natural attrition. The function didn’t get eliminated. It lost its institutional reason to be replenished.
U.S. labor market data confirms this silent displacement. Between late 2022 and mid-2025, only 1% of companies explicitly cited AI as a reason for job cuts. However, a growing number admitted that AI allowed them to avoid hiring for lower-level functional roles altogether. Meanwhile, 35% began retraining employees into more complex functions. This is not acceleration for efficiency’s sake – it is a deliberate recalibration of work to fit the architecture of AI systems.
As YourNewsClub analyst of digital economies Alex Reinhardt notes:
“AI doesn’t fire people – it alters the growth curve. In the new HR reality, a ‘lost job’ isn’t someone being terminated. It’s a position that never enters the hiring pipeline. This is optimization through omission – quiet, strategic, and far more permanent.”
Lufthansa, Accenture and Duolingo have avoided direct commentary not because of hidden layoffs, but because their restructuring doesn’t rely on shutting departments down. It relies on not opening them back up. HR logic is shifting from “how do we retain staff” to “which functions should no longer regenerate.” That is the new economy of absence – roles do not die loudly. They simply fail to reappear.
Owen Radner, who tracks labor shifts for YourNewsClub, puts it bluntly:
“Corporate AI does not demolish departments – it drains their meaning. Once a support or analytical task becomes an AI pattern, the role doesn’t disappear – it ceases to qualify as a profession.”
The core risk we identify is not technological unemployment through layoffs. It is the erosion of entry points into industries. Historically, support, operations and basic client roles served as social ramps into professional ecosystems. They were the training grounds from which talent escalated upward. These are precisely the layers being dissolved first – and that will reshape career mobility more profoundly than any headline about layoffs.
If this trajectory holds, the labor market will enter a phase of asymmetrical restructuring where jobs are not destroyed – they are never created in the first place. And that is colder than any wave of terminations. Unlike layoffs, a vacancy that never appears leaves no trace. It triggers no news cycle, no political statement, no social debate. It is a silent form of technological pressure – and we consider it one of the defining threats of the coming years.
At YourNewsClub we arrive at a decisive conclusion: AI is not taking work away – it is rewriting the logic of how work begins. Those preparing for a future of layoffs are already looking in the wrong direction. The real breakpoint happened earlier – at the moment when a profession simply stopped being born.