> How are they able to attribute this? Ive yet to see an AI tool that is useful to the point where I don't need extra coworkers.

In my opinion AI is unlikely to be a significant driver of higher unemployment among IT workers, but it absolutely is able to offset the need for technical resource for many simple technical tasks a low-skill IT worker might have previously done.

Say you want to add a redirect to a .htaccess config file but are not very technical, an AI can absolutely guide you in doing that.

We're also increasingly seeing smaller companies using the AI within SaaS products to carry out basic tasks a technical person might have previously have done. I think this is specifically the combination of AI + SaaS and not just AI, but for example you're not going to hire a developer to build an Ecommerce site in 2025 and even if you run into problems 90% of the time you can problem solve and resolve it yourself with AI.

I don't think it's replacing skilled developers, but there's clearly a growing supply/demand problem for developers with companies investing more in AI and huge numbers of developers coming on the market who have recently graduated or completed bootcamps who are looking for work. So AI isn't directly replacing jobs, but it is changing how tech companies are investing – less in technical resource and more in AI.

"We are cutting jobs because the magic robots will do the work instead" looks better to investors than "we are sacrificing long-term growth for a short-term profit sugar rush" or "we have insufficient customers" (generally you lay off r&d etc for the former, and operations due to the latter), or, even worse, "we dramatically overhired".

This is hardly new; there's usually _some_ sort of excuse for layoffs, because none of the _common_ causes are particularly attractive to the markets on their face, but if dressed up a bit the markets do _usually_ fall for them.

It's all spin. It's a way for companies to spruik their own AI products (or signal that they are on the AI bandwagon) when announcing hiring freezes or layoffs.

Lazy journalists gobble it up without question.

Agreed, I want tangible examples to pair & case studies to pair with the overall trend. Weak journalism