Osman Şenkul
According to data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Washington-based consultancy that tracks announced or confirmed job cuts in the US, 2025 was a year of very weak growth in new job creation in the US. While 2.2 million jobs were created in the world’s largest economy in 2024, the number of new jobs created in 2025 remained at 584,000. This makes last year the weakest year for job growth since 2003, excluding the disruptions of the pandemic years 2020 and 2021, when millions of people lost their jobs.
US employers announced 507,647 planned job openings in 2025. This figure represents a 34 per cent drop from the 769,953 announced in 2024. This is the lowest annual total since 2010, when 402,608 new hires were planned.
According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, last year, US employers explicitly attributed 55,000 of the 1.17 million job cuts to artificial intelligence. While employers emphasise that this represents less than 5% of redundancies, when it comes to employment, it is clear that artificial intelligence is not yet the scourge or magic potion that people portray it to be. In August, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published a study showing that 95% of generative artificial intelligence does not provide any meaningful return:
Despite the rush to integrate powerful new models, only about 5% of AI pilot programmes achieve rapid revenue growth, while the vast majority stall and fail to create a measurable impact on the profit and loss statement. Research based on 150 interviews with leaders, a survey of 350 employees, and an analysis of 300 publicly available AI applications reveals a clear distinction between success stories and projects that have stalled.”
According to Fortune, one of the world’s leading magazines based in the US, artificial intelligence came up during a recent CEO dinner in New York, where layoffs were being discussed. The question debated at the meeting was how to talk about potential layoffs related to artificial intelligence.
An unnamed participant in the magazine said, ‘I would rather focus on artificial intelligence than on the decline in demand. At least you are looking to the future rather than falling behind.’ Another said, ‘I think it’s too early to quantify this, but artificial intelligence is affecting the way we think about hiring and layoffs.’
The topic emphasised here was the idea that mass layoffs would pave the way for higher company profits. One concrete example of this idea was seen in the shares of United Parcel Service (UPS), a US-based multinational freight and supply chain management company. On the day UPS CEO Carol Tomé announced the layoff of 48,000 employees as part of the ‘most significant strategic change’ in the company’s history, the company’s shares gained 8 per cent in value. Research by the IMF, Deloitte and other organisations also confirms that publicly traded companies resort to layoffs more quickly than private companies.
According to the Global Risks Report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Wednesday, global power rivalries and strategic conflicts top the list of the most serious short-term risks as we enter 2026. The report states that half of the businesspeople and other leaders surveyed expect a turbulent period over the next two years, while only 1 per cent expect a calm period. The resulting picture is that the world is ‘on the brink’.
The report, based on a survey of 1,300 leaders from government, business and other organisations, reflects a changing landscape in which ‘geo-economic conflict,’ fuelled by increasing competition and the use of economic tools such as tariffs, regulations, supply chains and capital restrictions as weapons, has risen to the top of the business world’s list of concerns for the next two years. The report warns that this could lead to a significant contraction in global trade.
WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahidi said, ‘This is largely about armed conflicts between states and the concerns associated with that. Overall, about a third of respondents are very concerned about what this will mean for the global economy and essentially the state of the world in 2026.’ According to the report, concerns about economic risks over the next two years recorded the sharpest increases among all risk categories included in WEF surveys. Zahidi wrote in the report, ‘As countries face high debt burdens and volatile markets, concerns about economic stagnation, rising inflation and potential asset bubbles are growing,’ adding:
“Finally, technological acceleration creates unprecedented opportunities, but it also poses significant risks in the form of misinformation and disinformation. This is the most pressing concern in the short term and raises concerns about the potential negative consequences of artificial intelligence in the long term. This risk shows the sharpest increase from short-term to long-term among all 33 risks covered.”
According to the findings in the WEF report, in the worst-case scenario for labour markets, such as job losses, new job creation to counter this, and the impact of artificial intelligence on this, both increased productivity and increased unemployment could push economies into an unbalanced structure where some segments of the population live in prosperity while others struggle.
Creativity, learning and leisure potential could lead to a loss of purpose, meaning and contribution to society, and this could be compounded by a breakdown in alignment around objective realities. The expansion of artificial intelligence’s military applications could, in the worst case, bring proportional risks that could lead to conflicts escalating rapidly and perhaps unintentionally.
It focuses the mind. With geopolitical conflicts, tariffs, climate risk and general concerns about the US economy, leaders must consider many variables when deciding what to do next. Being on the cusp of a new era of innovation may simplify some of these choices. Another participant at the CEO dinner stated: ‘I don’t know what will happen in Venezuela, but I know I need to invest in artificial intelligence.’
As can be understood from this, technological acceleration creates unprecedented opportunities, but at the same time, it also poses significant risks in the form of misinformation and disinformation. This situation is emerging as the most important short-term concern, particularly due to the unprecedented scale of unemployment that is being created, and it is causing concern about the possible negative consequences of artificial intelligence in the long term. This risk is also defined by the WEF as ‘the risk showing the sharpest increase from the short to the long term among all risks covered’ and is described as follows:
“In a negative scenario for labour markets, market forces uncontrolled by governance due to geopolitical competition will accelerate the tendency to automate and replace human labour as much as possible, compared to approaches aimed at enhancing human tasks and skills. New roles and tasks may emerge to compensate for the losses, but these may take place over a much longer time frame than job losses, as was the case in previous major technological transformations.”
In such a scenario, it is clear that the gains brought by artificial intelligence will mainly flow to highly skilled, highly productive digital workers, while opportunities for less productive workers who do not develop the relevant skills will diminish more rapidly. In such circumstances, the political consequences will undoubtedly be more severe when unemployment affects population groups such as the managerial and professional classes, who have political voices, access to the media, and higher expectations of security. Following such developments, economic collapse and, consequently, urban decay may begin in regions central to information and services, potentially creating a powerful, angry political force.
For this reason, the effects of the deterioration in the labour market, which has begun particularly in today’s major economies, are likely to be very significant, affecting households, communities and political systems, and consequently, recovery from economic deterioration may be much more difficult. As has been seen at various times and in various parts of the world, the more societies are crushed under economic pressure, the worse the political impasse can become.
Some countries may enter a vicious cycle of economic contraction and social discontent due to the coexistence of AI-driven productivity gains with widespread disruption and deep inequality. University graduates, in particular, may struggle to keep pace with ever-evolving AI capabilities and, as we have seen in many parts of Turkey, may be forced to take temporary jobs. If highly educated young people remain unemployed for long periods, this could lead to instability in society. The WEF report, which draws particular attention to this issue, emphasises that inequality has been the most interconnected risk for two consecutive years and that this reflects its role as a ‘transmission mechanism for inequality.’ In other words, ‘unemployment feeds inequality, which naturally leads to social polarisation.’
Therefore, even if the implementation of artificial intelligence leads to significant increases in productivity, it is inevitable that incomes will fall, consumer confidence will decline, spending will decrease, and potentially trigger an economic downturn, as the middle class gradually empties and avenues for social mobility rapidly disappear. According to the WEF report, ‘As the next decade progresses, policymakers’ options will diminish: high public debt and service costs will constrain fiscal measures, while rising unemployment among the middle class will negatively impact the tax base and housing markets. Advanced economies may remain stuck for years in the unequal economic system prevalent in many developing countries.’
According to the WEF report, artificial intelligence ‘could eliminate 50 per cent of entry-level white-collar jobs in the US within the next five years, pushing unemployment to 10-20 per cent.’
As can be seen here, artificial intelligence-driven unemployment, which is currently prominent in developed countries that have made significant technological advances, has not yet clearly manifested itself in countries such as Turkey, where production-oriented investments have long been sidelined, and unemployment has become a chronic problem. However, these recent developments indicate that it is lying in wait. As the data shows, even in developed economies where new investments continue unabated, the problem of creating new jobs driven by artificial intelligence has begun to come to the fore, as the 2025 data also reveals.
This development will only add to the burden of unemployment and poverty already weighing on workers in countries that have failed to curb inflation through high interest rates that stifle new investment, rather than through production.