- Technical sector breaks increased from 98,000 (3.9%) to 152,000 (5.7%) in just one month
- Software development and job in white collar could be most exposed to risk
- Personal and skilled roles remain competitive
New Wall Street Journal Reporting has revealed an alarming trend in the technology sector – just as skeptics expected many years ago, artificial intelligence seems to displace human workers and lead to higher unemployment rate.
The report found that the sector that the unemployment rate increased from 3.9% in December to 5.7% in January, or from 98,000 to 152,000 Janco Associates analysis of the US working data.
More broadly, 143,000 new jobs were added to the US economy in January 2025, albeit at a slower speed than optimal.
AI costs it job
In fact, white collar and knowledge workers are seen as the most vulnerable when it comes to AI-induced job shifts. Jaco Associates CEO Victor Janulaitis commented: “Jobs are removed within the IT function, which is routine and everyday, such as reporting, clergy administration.”
Companies also reduce their dependence on programmers and system designers in the hope that artificial intelligence can deliver additional cost savings. The number of software development tasks fell 8.5% year-over-year in January 2025.
Although last year’s pattern was significantly lower than 2023, then layoffs. FYI asked 264,000 technology sector’s layoffs, which estimated 152,000 tech workers still lost their jobs in 2024 – almost as many as the 165,000 workers who lost their jobs in 2022.
The latest remarkable job losses include Sonos (12% of its employee number), Meta (5%), Microsoft, Amazon and Google.
The report also suggests that additional business investments in artificial intelligence could serve as an early sign that future job cuts could come – a trend described as “Cost Funding.”
Although certain jobs may be at risk, however, others remain in high demand. The report reveals that certain personal and skilled roles are in greater demand than many positions with white collar-the ‘personal’ element of this trend is particularly interesting, given the widespread return-to-office mandates adopted mail- pandemic.
However, not all bad news-janulaisis revealed that January’s figures painting a negative image for the coming year could actually be artificially inflated by many companies that want to implement this year’s cost-saving measures now, rather than later.
Either way, with an additional 10,800 job cuts that worked in the first five weeks of 2025 in the entire industry, many workers face an uncertain future.
