[ { "id": "WAAI-2026-P01", "number": 1, "ordinal": "First", "title": "the AI argument remains a front rank reason for layoffs in the United States in 2027, while the officially measured effect stays small.", "text": "In the layoff statistics of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the technology will again be among the three most frequently cited reasons in at least six months of 2027, and at the same time fewer than 10 percent of AI using companies in the business survey of the American Census Bureau will continue to report a reduced headcount. The prediction is a bet that the story and the measurement keep drifting apart, because the AI argument is an instrument of capital market communication and not a description of the operating business. It will be tested against the monthly Challenger reports and against the next AI supplement to the Business Trends and Outlook Survey.", "test": "It will be tested against the monthly Challenger reports and against the next AI supplement to the Business Trends and Outlook Survey.", "target_year": 2027, "sources": [], "line": 678, "citation": "Kürner, Gerhard (2026): Work After AI 2026. The Great Misconception About the AI Job Killer. Work After AI, 2026 edition, version 1.2, first prediction (WAAI-2026-P01). Wels: Kuerner Group GmbH. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22868155.", "version": "1.2" }, { "id": "WAAI-2026-P02", "number": 2, "ordinal": "Second", "title": "at least three well known companies publicly reverse an AI justified hiring freeze at the entry level by the fall of 2027.", "text": "The thinned out pipeline of their own junior talent and the rising cost of experienced specialists force the change of course, and it will not be carried out quietly but announced as a program, as Cognizant and EY already demonstrated in 2026. It counts as a hit when a company with more than 10,000 employees publicly announces that it is explicitly withdrawing or reversing an earlier reduction of entry level positions that was justified by the technology; programs that were never preceded by a freeze do not count.", "test": null, "target_year": 2027, "sources": [], "line": 680, "citation": "Kürner, Gerhard (2026): Work After AI 2026. The Great Misconception About the AI Job Killer. Work After AI, 2026 edition, version 1.2, second prediction (WAAI-2026-P02). Wels: Kuerner Group GmbH. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22868155.", "version": "1.2" }, { "id": "WAAI-2026-P03", "number": 3, "ordinal": "Third", "title": "the American entry level slump will again not appear in the official series of Germany and Austria in 2027, and the delay persists.", "text": "Unemployment among people under 25 with a university degree will not rise more steeply than overall unemployment in either country, and the continuation of the Swiss KOF measurement remains the only European finding in which exposed occupations perform measurably worse. The prediction is the delay hypothesis from the chapter on the European yardstick in testable form; it is refuted if the Bundesagentur für Arbeit or the Arbeitsmarktservice reports a disproportionate increase among young graduates in exposed occupations for 2027.", "test": "The prediction is the delay hypothesis from the chapter on the European yardstick in testable form; it is refuted if the Bundesagentur für Arbeit or the Arbeitsmarktservice reports a disproportionate increase among young graduates in exposed occupations for 2027.", "target_year": 2027, "sources": [], "line": 682, "citation": "Kürner, Gerhard (2026): Work After AI 2026. The Great Misconception About the AI Job Killer. Work After AI, 2026 edition, version 1.2, third prediction (WAAI-2026-P03). Wels: Kuerner Group GmbH. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22868155.", "version": "1.2" }, { "id": "WAAI-2026-P04", "number": 4, "ordinal": "Fourth", "title": "the gap between pilot and production does not close in 2027.", "text": "In McKinsey's annual survey series, the share of companies that attribute an effect on the operating result to the technology will stay below 45 percent, after 37 percent in 2026, a value that McKinsey itself reports as unchanged from the prior year. The group with a measurable contribution to operating profit of at least 5 percent will stay below 10 percent, after around 6 percent. Adoption will keep growing, the effect will not grow to the same degree, because organizations learn more slowly than the vendors deliver. It will be tested against the 2027 edition of the same series, with the caveat that these are self reported answers from a survey run by a consultancy that sells rebuild programs.", "test": "It will be tested against the 2027 edition of the same series, with the caveat that these are self reported answers from a survey run by a consultancy that sells rebuild programs.", "target_year": 2027, "sources": [], "line": 684, "citation": "Kürner, Gerhard (2026): Work After AI 2026. The Great Misconception About the AI Job Killer. Work After AI, 2026 edition, version 1.2, fourth prediction (WAAI-2026-P04). Wels: Kuerner Group GmbH. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22868155.", "version": "1.2" }, { "id": "WAAI-2026-P05", "number": 5, "ordinal": "Fifth", "title": "at least five well known companies in the German speaking countries announce a reorganization by the fall of 2027 that structures units around topics and outcomes instead of functions.", "text": "The organization of the future, described this year as a target picture by consultancies, market researchers and tool vendors, reaches practice first in companies with a high share of knowledge work and light regulation, and it will be announced publicly there, because it can be marketed as a competitive advantage. Announced reorganizations count as a hit when small units take over responsibility for the entire process, as do the corresponding answers in the 2027 board pulse, into which the question about the division of work will be taken up as a core question.", "test": null, "target_year": 2027, "sources": [], "line": 688, "citation": "Kürner, Gerhard (2026): Work After AI 2026. The Great Misconception About the AI Job Killer. Work After AI, 2026 edition, version 1.2, fifth prediction (WAAI-2026-P05). Wels: Kuerner Group GmbH. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22868155.", "version": "1.2" }, { "id": "WAAI-2026-P06", "number": 6, "ordinal": "Sixth", "title": "at least one publicly visible large scale attempt to flatten hierarchies and align the organization around AI agents will be partially withdrawn by the fall of 2027.", "text": "Meta's Project OT is the first documented case in 2026, and it will not be the last, because in most cases the coordination work that was cut turns out to have been quietly shifted rather than saved, following the pattern of Zappos and Medium. It counts as a hit when a company with more than 10,000 employees publicly withdraws or suspends an announced reduction of hierarchy; a mere slowdown does not count.", "test": null, "target_year": 2027, "sources": [], "line": 690, "citation": "Kürner, Gerhard (2026): Work After AI 2026. The Great Misconception About the AI Job Killer. Work After AI, 2026 edition, version 1.2, sixth prediction (WAAI-2026-P06). Wels: Kuerner Group GmbH. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22868155.", "version": "1.2" }, { "id": "WAAI-2026-P07", "number": 7, "ordinal": "Seventh", "title": "the gap between productivity and wages widens further in the early years of the technology.", "text": "In the American series of the Economic Policy Institute and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, productivity will grow more strongly in 2026 than the hourly wage of typical employees. In the German speaking countries, the spread between entrants and experienced staff in companies' wage expectations will not narrow if the survey is repeated; the ifo Institute measured this spread for the first time in 2026. The prediction puts the distribution question of the closing chapter into testable form, and it is refuted if wages keep pace with productivity in 2026.", "test": "The prediction puts the distribution question of the closing chapter into testable form, and it is refuted if wages keep pace with productivity in 2026.", "target_year": 2027, "sources": [], "line": 692, "citation": "Kürner, Gerhard (2026): Work After AI 2026. The Great Misconception About the AI Job Killer. Work After AI, 2026 edition, version 1.2, seventh prediction (WAAI-2026-P07). Wels: Kuerner Group GmbH. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22868155.", "version": "1.2" }, { "id": "WAAI-2026-P08", "number": 8, "ordinal": "Eighth", "title": "the AI argument does not arrive in the German speaking countries in 2027. No company in Germany, Austria or Switzerland with more than 10,000 employees justifies job cuts of more than 1,000 positions primarily with artificial intelligence by the end of 2027.", "text": "What has been part of capital market communication in the United States since 2025 fails to appear in the German speaking countries, and not because the technology is used less here, but because the argument yields nothing here. Where job cuts have to be negotiated with a works council, quantified in a social plan and justified before labor courts, invoking the technology is a poor justification, because it invites the question of which task exactly the machine has taken over. The job cuts that come in 2027 will be justified with the business cycle, costs, location and restructuring, the way SAP ran its restructuring of around 10,000 positions as a realignment and, in July 2026, saved on hiring, travel and suppliers in order to finance its own AI push, without attributing a single job to the technology, and the way Ingka retrained 8,500 call center employees instead of laying them off. It will be tested against the mandatory disclosures of listed companies, against press releases on restructurings, and against the social plans and mass layoff notifications of 2027 that become public. A counterexample counts only if the company itself names the technology as the main reason in its own announcement, not if the press attributes it to the company; a single counterexample refutes the prediction.", "test": "It will be tested against the mandatory disclosures of listed companies, against press releases on restructurings, and against the social plans and mass layoff notifications of 2027 that become public. A counterexample counts only if the company itself names the technology as the main reason in its own announcement, not if the press attributes it to the company; a single counterexample refutes the prediction.", "target_year": 2027, "sources": [], "line": 694, "citation": "Kürner, Gerhard (2026): Work After AI 2026. The Great Misconception About the AI Job Killer. Work After AI, 2026 edition, version 1.2, eighth prediction (WAAI-2026-P08). Wels: Kuerner Group GmbH. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22868155.", "version": "1.2" }, { "id": "WAAI-2026-P09", "number": 9, "ordinal": "Ninth", "title": "the gender gap in the professional use of generative AI does not close in 2026.", "text": "In Eurostat's statistics on ICT use in households, men in Germany use generative AI at work 29 percent more often than women, 18 against 14 percent. In the annual figure for 2026, which Eurostat publishes in December 2026, this lead remains above 20 percent, even though women aged 16 to 24 were already ahead of men of the same age in 2025. The gap arises in the workplace, and in 2026 companies are not reorganizing their training fast enough for a single age cohort to close it. It is measured by the ratio of the professional usage rates of men and women between 16 and 74; the prediction is refuted if the men's lead falls to 20 percent or below. Austria runs alongside as a control series; there, the lead stood at 30 percent in 2025.[6]", "test": "It is measured by the ratio of the professional usage rates of men and women between 16 and 74; the prediction is refuted if the men's lead falls to 20 percent or below. Austria runs alongside as a control series; there, the lead stood at 30 percent in 2025.[6]", "target_year": 2026, "sources": [ 6 ], "line": 696, "citation": "Kürner, Gerhard (2026): Work After AI 2026. The Great Misconception About the AI Job Killer. Work After AI, 2026 edition, version 1.2, ninth prediction (WAAI-2026-P09). Wels: Kuerner Group GmbH. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22868155.", "version": "1.2" } ]