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After a year marked by AI-related layoffs, influential executives and senior executives are now warning that we can expect a sharp increase in anxiety around technology in 2026.
Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said Tuesday that AI is “a major driver of economic growth,” in a conversation with CNBC’s Karen Tso and Steve Sedgwick at the World Economic Forum’s flagship conference in Davos, Switzerland.
“We see a growth potential of 0.8% over the next few years, but this is hitting the labor market like a tsunami, and most countries and most companies are not prepared for it,” Georgieva explained.
“What should they (countries and companies) do? They need to think about what new skills are already needed and how they are going to acquire these new skills,” she added.
AI is considered an important factor contributing to almost 55,000 layoffs in the United States in 2025, according to December data from consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Large companies cited AI to justify their layoffs.
Amazon announced 15,000 job cuts last year, while from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said 4,000 customer service employees were laid off because AI was already doing 50% of the work at the company.
Other companies that cited AI in their restructuring were technology consulting firms. Accenture and air group Lufthansa.
Workers’ views on AI are evolving as layoffs continue to dominate headlines. In fact, the employee concerns about job loss due to AI have skyrocketed from 28% in 2024 to 40% in 2026, according to preliminary findings from consultancy Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 report, which surveyed 12,000 people worldwide.
Mercer’s study shows that 62% of employees believe that leaders underestimate the emotional and psychological impact of AI.
“This year, anxiety over AI will move from a gentle hum to a loud roar,” Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a note on Tuesday. “This will be reflected in lawsuits on everything from copyright and privacy to data center location and protecting young people from chatbots encouraging self-harm or worse.”
The note cited a Stanford study in November, which referred to a 16% relative decline in employment for graduates in positions exposed to AI, as opposed to jobs for experienced employees remaining stable since ChatGPT launched in November 2022.
“Layoff anxiety will also become much greater,” the analysts added, while noting that the Stanford study was “inconclusive and noisy.”
Companies must upskill their workers
Companies that place much of the blame for job cuts on AI should be taken “with a grain of salt,” because “AI washing away layoffs will be a prominent feature in 2026,” according to Deutsche Bank analysts.
Indeed, some studies show that the impact of AI on the labor market has so far been limited. AI Has Not Yet Caused Widespread Job Losses, According to Yale University’s Budget Lab said in a report in October. The lab analyzed U.S. labor market data from 2022 to 2025 and found that the share of workers holding different jobs hasn’t changed much since ChatGPT’s debut.
Sander van’t Noordende, CEO of Randstad, the world’s largest recruitment company, told CNBC in Davos on Tuesday that the role of AI in job cuts was overestimated.
“I would say that these 50,000 job losses are not due to AI, but just general market uncertainty. It is too early to link these losses to AI,” Noordende said.
He added that “2026 is the year of great adaptation,” where individuals and team leaders must start thinking about how to integrate AI and ensure productivity gains.
“I see AI as a big opportunity for our industry to do a better job for talent. Reach talent. Connect with talent, assess talent, onboard talent. A lot of these activities can be done by AI,” he said.
Mercer’s report further reveals that an overwhelming 97% of investors say financing decisions would be negatively affected by companies that fail to systematically upskill workers in AI and advance them into the future.
More than three-quarters of investors said they were more likely to invest in companies that provide AI training to their employees.
“A few years ago, even last year, everyone was washing AI annual reports, if you put AI in there you got an immediate bump,” Ravin Jesuthasan, future of work expert and senior partner at Mercer, told CNBC.
“Now you have the opposite phenomenon where people are sort of running for the hills… I think what you see next is investors saying… ‘How do you combine your workforce with AI? How do you advance your workforce?'”
Jesuthasan pointed out that investors say they will “actively invest or divest in companies that fail to achieve optimal combinations of humans and machines” because they view upskilling as essential to “maintain the economic performance of the organization.”