LinkedIn has confirmed a 20% decline in hiring since 2022, but the professional networking platform says artificial intelligence (AI) is not driving the ongoing slowdown, as per a TechCrunch report citing an interview at the Semafor World Economy summit.
LinkedIn’s chief global affairs and legal officer, Blake Lawit, while speaking at the summit, pushed back against the idea that AI was responsible for the slowdown in hiring and instead said the broader decline in hiring is more closely tied to rising interest rates.
“At LinkedIn… we have an economic graph which is over a billion members. We’ve got companies, jobs, skills. It’s really an amazing real-time view of what’s happening in the labour market. And we’ve looked — because everyone wants to know the answer to this question: Is AI impacting jobs right now? We’ve looked and, honestly, we haven’t seen it,” Lawit said during the interview.
No impact of AI on vulnerable sections
Lawit noted that if AI were actively replacing workers, the job losses would be highly visible in specific, vulnerable sectors such as customer support, administrative roles, or marketing. He also confirmed the company is not seeing disproportionate impacts in those areas.
“We have not seen the sort of impacts that you would expect to see in areas that everyone is talking about AI… like industries, whether or not it’s customer support, or administrative, or marketing — all these places that if we were seeing impacts [from] AI that’s where it would be,” Lawit noted.
“Yes, hiring’s down, but not down more,” the LinkedIn executive added.
Lawit also addressed concerns regarding entry-level positions, noting that LinkedIn’s data did not indicate a severe decline in hiring for college-aged young adults seeking their first jobs when compared to mid-career or senior professionals.
While AI isn’t currently responsible for the hiring slowdown, Lawit warned that the technology is rapidly changing the nature of work itself. Lawit also did not rule out the possibility of AI displacing jobs down the line, stating, “Doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen in the future, but not yet.”
He went on to point out that over the last few years, the core skills required to perform the average job have already changed by 25%. With the rise of generative AI tools, LinkedIn now expects that figure to jump to 70% by 2030.
“So, even if you’re not changing jobs, your job’s changing on you,” Lawit said.
