A survey of 1,000 hiring managers found that 59% admit they emphasize AI when they must explain hiring freezes or layoffs because it “plays better with stakeholders” than citing financial constraints.
The findings are contained in a broader Resume.org survey about hiring trends, which found that 92% of companies plan to hire in 2026, but simultaneously, 55% intend to reduce their employee headcounts.
“What we are seeing is workforce rebalancing. Companies are laying off in areas that no longer align with near-term priorities while hiring aggressively in functions tied to revenue, transformation, and efficiency,” said Kara Dennison, Resume.org’s Head of Career Advising.
“Most organizations are reducing roles that are higher-cost, slower to yield ROI, or misaligned with new operating models,” Dennison said. “That often includes layers of middle management, duplicated functions after reorganizations, and roles tied to legacy processes. At the same time, they’re investing in roles that support growth, automation, data, customer retention, and execution speed.”
Companies cite AI (44%), reorganization/restructuring (42%), and budget constraints (39%) as the primary drivers behind these cuts, suggesting that layoffs are not tied to a single factor but are part of broader restructuring and cost-control strategies.
While AI influences staffing decisions, most companies aren’t experiencing the dramatic job replacement narrative that often gets pushed. Only 9% say AI has fully replaced certain roles, while nearly half (45%) say it has partially reduced the need for new hires, suggesting companies are using AI more as a hiring slowdown tool than a true workforce substitute.
At the same time, 45% report that AI has had little to no impact on staffing levels, underscoring the uneven and limited effect it actually has across organizations.
Tellingly, most companies admitted they framed layoffs or hiring slowdowns as AI-driven because it plays better with stakeholders than saying the real reason is financial constraints. Nearly 6 in 10 companies report doing this, including 17% that claim to do it exactly, and 42% that say they do it somewhat.
