AI + ML
US unemployment rate rises to 4.4%
The U.S. economy shed 92,000 jobs in February, far less than analysts expected to add about 50,000 jobs. This shortage has raised concerns that AI is contributing to rising unemployment rates.
Employment analysts Challenger, Gray and Christmas said artificial intelligence was specifically cited as the reason for the 4,680 job cuts, about 10% of the total layoffs announced in February. So far in 2026, AI has been cited as the cause of 12,304 job cuts announcements, or 8% of layoff plans, it said in a blog published the day before the jobs report.
Analysts cited AI as the cause of 54,836 job cuts announced by companies in 2025, representing 5% of the total number of job cuts in that year. Since 2023, AI has been cited in 91,753 layoff announcements, representing approximately 3% of all layoff plans announced over the same period.
“Technology is responding to a lot of pressures right now. AI is the big story, but there are also global regulatory concerns, a slowdown in digital advertising due to tariffs and economic uncertainty, and rising costs of both hiring and financing employees, forcing companies to make tough decisions,” wrote Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer at Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Last week, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced that his company Block would lay off 4,000 people, or 40% of its workforce, citing AI as the culprit.
said Gina Bolvin of Boston-based Bolvin Wealth Management. register He felt that Friday’s jobs report was choppy due to the healthcare worker strike in California and the potential lingering effects of the government shutdown, but said it does appear that AI is holding back hiring and causing a slowdown in the job market.
“I think AI disruption will be a theme again this year, but I think the decline in software has been overstated,” she said. “Robots have been trying to take over the world for 20 or 30 years, right?”
Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate, called the jobs report “ugly” but felt AI’s impact on the overall numbers was minimal.
“There are people who question whether artificial intelligence is part of it. I think it’s a minimal impact,” he said during a television appearance Friday. “While we have seen a decline of 10,000 intelligence workers, there is currently no reason to argue that the negative impact of AI on employment outweighs the potential positive impact of significant corporate capital spending being pumped into that sector of the economy, including the construction of data centres.”
A closer look at the numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that employment in “computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting, and related services” fell by 300 jobs from January to February, while the category lost 4,400 jobs year over year.
U.S.-based computer and electronic products manufacturers also suffered losses, dropping 700 jobs from January to February and 16,900 fewer jobs than the same period last year. U.S.-based semiconductor and other electronic component manufacturers shed 1,000 jobs from January to February, a loss of 17,200 compared to the same period last year.
As an industry, “professional and business services” lost 5,000 jobs between January and February, or 88,000 jobs compared to the previous year. Of this 88,000 loss, computer system design and related services decreased by 34,600 jobs from February 2025 to February 2026.
Management and support services lost 18,800 jobs from January to February, down 122,100 from the same period last year, from 8,556,800 in February 2025 to 8,434,700 last month.
Although some categories of health care workers fell by about 30,000 jobs from January to February, many of those jobs are still up from a year ago, and economists point to California’s ongoing labor movement as a factor. ®
