AI is often cited as one of the reasons for mass layoffs, especially in high-tech sectors, but it also appears to be creating new jobs for many fast-growing companies, according to a study released Tuesday by financial services firm Ramp and employment database Revelio Labs.
“Our early results are that it appears that companies are starting to look for more entry-level hires, and perhaps people who are familiar with AI,” said Ara Karazian, chief economist at financial services firm Lamp, which found an increase in early-career hires by companies at a time when they started investing heavily in AI.
of study tracked AI spending and employee records for nearly 22,000 U.S. companies from January 2021 to February 2026.
They found that companies that invested more in AI ended up increasing their headcount by an average of 10% over two years after deploying the technology. Companies that made the biggest investments in AI increased their hiring for entry-level jobs by 12%.
“If you’re a job seeker or a college graduate and you have a choice between two different companies that are otherwise similar, I would choose the company that uses AI,” Karazian said. “Our paper shows that those companies grow faster.”
Early, enthusiastic AI adopters were spending upwards of $100 per month per employee on AI and had their employees use advanced AI such as coding subscriptions rather than simple ChatGPT subscriptions.
Companies that adopted AI more casually and with less focus saw no increase in employment and fewer headcounts.
Ramp’s study focused on companies implementing AI and showed that AI had a positive effect on employment. Many are fast-growing, venture-backed companies that employ young, AI-native employees.
This study reached a different conclusion than a November 2025 Stanford University study that looked at salary data across the labor market and found employment for young software developers is down nearly 20% from its peak in late 2022.
Both findings could be true, Karazian said, because the Stanford study was broader and didn’t just focus on companies using AI.
“While recruitment among young people may be weak overall, what we’re finding is that hiring is actually strong for companies that are using AI or actively using AI,” he said.
Another recent study on the impact of AI on work: California’s AI unemployment tracking tool We looked at the state of the industry, education level and region as a whole and highlighted some alarming trends.
This seemed to undermine the perception that AI primarily negatively impacts younger employees and those in entry-level jobs.
It found that unemployment insurance claims for college-educated workers in jobs with high exposure to AI, such as customer service and software development, increased after the release of ChatGPT in 2022 and remained elevated through May 2026.
Unemployment claims for master’s and doctoral degrees in jobs exposed to AI are also on the rise, increasing from a baseline average of 13,000 claims per month in November 2022 to between 16,000 and 22,000 claims per month from mid-2023 onwards, the study found.
The study also breaks down unemployment claims by age and reveals that a significant portion of claims come from people aged 36 to 65, showing that the impact of AI is not just affecting early career jobs.
They also found that the San Francisco Bay Area has a higher rate of claims than other regions in California, and unemployment claims are concentrated in the technology sector.
In 2026, technology companies will let go of: 160,000 workersaccording to trueup.io, a website that tracks layoffs in the industry.
Many companies say AI is one of the main reasons for layoffs. Big tech companies like Meta, Oracle, and Microsoft are laying off tens of thousands of employees while investing billions of dollars in AI data centers.
Ramp’s finding that mass adoption of AI could lead to job growth suggests that some companies announcing large-scale layoffs may be blaming AI for periodic cost reductions, a practice known as “AI washing.”
“When I hear CEOs talking about layoffs and blaming it on AI, I would be skeptical,” Karazian said.
