Is AI Really Replacing Thousands Of White Collar Jobs??

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2025-10-29

YouTube video id: HPld9n-6LP4

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPld9n-6LP4

Everyone, this article tens of thousands
of white-collar jobs are disappearing as
AI starts to bite. It's one of the most
irresponsible pieces of journalism I've
seen on artificial intelligence yet. It
is an atrocious article. It suggests
that AI is taking tens of thousands of
white-collar jobs. It's going to make so
many people fear that their jobs are
about to be automated by AI. And it's
just completely unsupported by anything
in the body. This headline is
unsupported. Uh And I think frankly it
was important for me to come to you
straight like this to talk to you about
this story because this is the Wall
Street Journal. Everybody in business
reads this reads this newspaper. The
managers are going to be looking at
this. Workers are going to be looking at
this. They're going to think that it's
true that there are thousands of
white-collar jobs that are being
automated. Uh oftentimes people don't
read behind beyond the headline. And I'm
going to read beyond the headline right
now and just show you exactly how
irresponsible uh this journalism is
because you will see that the body just
does not support anything that the
headline is saying. And you might at a
glance be like, "Oh, this is happening."
Uh but it as you look through you'll
realize you'll realize that it's not the
case at all. Here's the lead. The
nation's largest employers have a new
message for office workers. Help not
wanted. Amazon.com said this week that
it would cut 14,000 corporate jobs with
plans to eliminate as much as 10% of its
white-collar workforce. Eventually, UPS
said Tuesday that it reduced its
management workforce by about 14,000
positions over the past 22 months days
after the retailer Target said it would
cut 1,800 corporate roles. Okay, so what
the Wall Street Journal is establishing
here is there's been a lot of corporate
roles and white-collar work that's been
cut recently. That is absolutely
happening. I'm not disputing this at
all. And in fact, the third paragraph
here so you have the first line the hook
then you have the long lead here and
there's more. Earlier in October,
white-collar workers for companies
including Rivian, uh Molson Coors, who's
Allen Hamilton, and General Motors
received pink slips or learned that they
would come soon. Added up tens of
thousands of newly laid-off white-collar
workers in America are entering a
stagnant job market with seemingly no
place for them. Okay, again, the
headline implied implied that these jobs
are being taken by AI. We are now well
let's count this as a paragraph three
paragraphs in.
Where's the AI automating these jobs?
Let's go to the Amazon story.
At 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Kelly
Williamson woke up to an alarming text
from her employer, Amazon's Whole Foods
Market, urging her to check her email.
Review ASAP and stay home from work
today, the message said. Williamson's
role on the asset protection team was
being eliminated. The badge and laptop
from the 55-year-old from Austin, Texas
were deactivated. She was given 90 days
to look for another job at the company.
She said her personal belongings are
being mailed to her. Okay, again, so now
we are five paragraphs in. We haven't
the article doesn't make any assertion
that this person's job is being
automated with artificial intelligence.
We've we've gotten a decent chunk of the
way, probably more than most people even
read when they're picking up the
newspaper. And we haven't had a single
example of anybody's job being automated
by AI despite this headline. Again, the
headline of course tens of thousands of
white-collar jobs are disappearing as AI
starts to bite. Why put AI there? I
mean, maybe it's clicky, but again, like
you are a newspaper. Your responsibility
is to tell the truth. And frankly, this
this headline is starting to look more
and more weak as we read through the
body. And frankly, folks, it's about to
get much worse.
Okay, here we go. A a leaner new normal
for employment in the US is emerging.
Large employers are retrenching, making
deep cuts to white-collar positions, and
leaving fewer opportunities for
experienced and new workers who had
counted on well-paying office work to
support families and fund retirements.
Nearly 2 million people in the US have
been without a job for 27 weeks or more
according to recent federal data. Again,
this is all this is all legitimate. If
the story was just about how there's
like a white-collar slowdown in the
United States, by all means, I would say
it's fine even reasonable and and
warranted. We need to know about these
things.
But why is it happening? And and this is
there there are companies or the what I
will just say, you know, opinion
leaders, reporters, maybe editors who
are trying to shoehorn this white-collar
work slowdown into this idea that AI is
doing it. And the entire premise of this
story is about to fall apart when you
read this paragraph here. This is called
the nut graph in journalism. It's
supposed to tell you what's actually
happening.
And it is the one of the most flimsy nut
paragraphs I've ever seen. Does not back
up the headline at all. Behind the wave
of white-collar layoffs in part is the
embrace by companies of artificial
intelligence,
which executives hope can handle more of
the work that well-compensated
white-collar workers have been doing.
All right, I'm going to pause here. Just
let me get parse the headline. The
headline is saying the white-collar jobs
are disappearing disappearing as AI
starts to bite. So maybe it's like vague
enough to be true where it's not saying
AI is automating thousands of
white-collar jobs. But as AI starts to
bite but imply it implies that it's AI
is biting those jobs away. Again, like
the words in these headlines are is is
nonsensical. Uh because then when you
think about what they're actually
saying, they're saying that AI is
something that executives hope can
handle more of the work that
well-compensated white-collar workers
have been doing. It's not that
executives say that the AI is doing the
work. It's not that the executives have
handed the work over. They hope that the
AI can handle uh the work uh that
well-compensated white-collar works have
been doing workers have been doing.
That's it? All right, maybe there's
something in the second second sentence
here that will give us uh some more
concrete information about AI automating
work. Investors have pushed the C-suite
to work more efficiently with fewer
fewer employees. Okay, this is again the
most important paragraph of the story.
It tells us that executives hope that AI
can do the work. It's saying investors
have pushed the C-suite to be uh more
efficient.
Let's go to the final sentence. This
better show that AI is automating work.
Otherwise, this entire story falls
apart. Factors driving slower hiring
including political uncertainty and
higher costs.
You have to be kidding me here. I mean,
this is a major headline in the Wall
Street Journal. Tens of thou I'll read
it again. Tens of thousands of
white-collar jobs are disappearing as AI
starts to bite. This is going to be
something that, you know, people are
going to be forwarding readers workers
are going to be reading. They're going
to be panicking, right? Is it coming
next for me?
This again the most important paragraph
of the whole story. It it gives you a
hope that this stuff will actually
automate work. It will say it says that
investors want more efficient uh um
work. And it also has this part about
how um
slower hiring is political uncertainty
and higher costs.
This the article shows me nowhere
nowhere nowhere where AI has automated
work. So how again do you have this
headline? It just seems like this is
um unfortunately like maybe something
that editors wanted to get out there. Um
they put they put three reporters on it.
Uh three reporters. And again, we're
like at paragraph eight or nine now. And
we haven't seen a single uh
uh job being shown to have been
automated by AI in the story.
Uh it's lazy at best. Um but let's read
on. These factors are remaking what
office work looks like in the US,
leaving the managers that remain with
more workers to supervise and less time
to meet with them while saddling the
employees fortunate enough to have jobs
with heavier workloads.
Look, maybe a more responsible version
of this article is just saying uh AI has
caused uh companies to rethink where
they could be more efficient and they've
cut. Um but the suggestion that AI
itself is part of the automation uh
it's just it's not backed up at all in
this story. Uh and and again, it's just
feeding into this larger narrative. We
had of course this idea that Amazon is
going to lay off 14,000 people, which is
referenced in the lead of the story. Um
and and we just aren't seeing the
the technology and and people who are on
this channel know the technology is not
there. It's not able to automate these
thousands of jobs yet. Um and we just
don't have the evidence. I'm scrolling
through the story more
uh because there's one
tiny little sentence here uh where
they're they're they do suggest um
that AI can handle
uh some some work. Okay, so let's go
back down. So Mike Mike Kaufman, the
chief executive of the growth advisory
consulting firm SBI, said in the past 6
months he had to cut software
development team by 80% while
productivity has surged. We have someone
managing clusters of agents that are
doing coding or AI writes its own
Python. Okay, so all right. This is one
of the well-known use cases. AI can um
mod you know, can can automate some
code.
That's not what the the article is just
not showing that that's the case. I
mean, we have sales people here uh who
are talking to the Wall Street Journal
about how they can't find work. Uh and
all right, so the AI can do little
coding. There's just it's completely
disconnected. Um I just let's Lord
almighty, okay.
I I again, I don't know how this story
got published.
Look at this guy in the in the image.
He's so sad. Walking away from uh his
job. White-collar opportunities in
America are becoming harder to find. I
don't deny that. I would never minimize
that. But I would also without any
evidence imply or with Maybe I'm going
too hard. Maybe I wouldn't without with
very scant evidence and certainly not
enough that I can fit, you know, in in
the first nine paragraphs. Can't get
much evidence at all in those earlier
paragraphs. I would never ever write
this headline. This headline is going to
you know, it's going to create panic.
It's irresponsible. I cannot believe
that it got by editors
and it it it frankly is going to um it
is going to detract from the real
conversation that we need to have about
this stuff. Are there places that AI is
is uh is going to take jobs? Absolutely.
I believe that. Um does this story show
it at all?
No. No, it doesn't. Uh it it just This
is not the way that the conversation on
AI needs to go.