US crypto and AI Czar David Sacks is calling the media out over the AI job displacement narrative, saying that the headlines are built on bad interpretation rather than real evidence.
In a new post on X, Sacks says the headlines blaming AI for large-scale job destruction were based on a single noisy data point that did not hold up once the next month of reporting arrived.
In November, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said that US employers announced 153,074 job cuts in October amid cooling demand, rising costs and AI integration.
According to Sacks, fresh data suggests that AI job loss is much smaller than what the media reported.
“Last month, a bunch of scare headlines claimed that AI was ‘wreaking havoc’ on US jobs. This was based on October’s Challenger Gray report, which tracks announced layoffs.
These headlines were misleading or outright false.
November’s Challenger Gray report makes clear that:
1. The October spike was anomalous. November fell by 53%.
2. Only 6,280 layoffs announced in November were attributable to AI.
3. For the year to date, AI has accounted for only 4.7% of total layoffs (and this number is likely high since it’s self-reported — CEOs would rather blame AI than their own job performance.)
Regardless of what you believe AI will do in the future, it is not a major cause of job loss now.”
Sacks cites new academic research from Yale, noting that longer-term tracking shows a stable labor market rather than one rocked by disruptive automation.
“In fact, according to a new study from the Yale Budget Lab, AI has caused ‘no discernible disruption’ in the labor market based on 33 months of data following ChatGPT’s release.”
Sacks also says the economic impact of AI is moving in the opposite direction of the panic narrative. He highlights signs of an infrastructure buildout that is lifting wages in construction and contributing meaningfully to national output.
“Quite the contrary, AI is currently responsible for as much as half of US GDP growth, including an infrastructure boom that has raised the salaries of many construction workers by 25-30%.
The narrative that ‘AI is causing massive job loss’ has no evidence to support it.”
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