The jobs data coming out continues to suggest the opposite of what a lot of people had thought would happen.
Just take engineering, as the prime example of the area with greatest AI impact (and perceived risk). Most companies now have far more software projects than ever before because of AI, and effectively only engineers are going to be the ones doing that work.
You can get by for a while by being non-technical building software, but eventually someone has to understand what the thing is that got built, has to maintain it, has to fix security issues that come up, upgrade the systems beneath it, and so on. That’s all jobs.
Now apply that to a number of other job functions. AI is going to cause companies to hire more in sales because agents can let them process more leads and do more customer research. AI will cause an explosion of new marketing roles because of how much more efficient it is to launch campaigns and target. The list goes on.
AI is going to have the opposite effect that lots of people thought on jobs.
What if AI is actually creating more jobs than it is replacing?
The latest JOLTs data showed that US job openings surged by a massive 731,000 jobs in April.
Markets were expecting no change, resulting in the largest beat in JOLTs history.
As a result, available employment hit 7.6 million for the month, the highest since May 2024.
And, job openings in the professional and business services sector surged by a massive 668,000.
The labor market's bull case from AI is underpriced.