The Trump administration is downplaying concerns that artificial intelligence is already destroying jobs, even as a growing number of technology companies openly link layoffs to AI-driven restructuring and automation. Speaking to CNBC, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said there was currently 'no sign in the data' that AI was directly costing people their jobs.
'There's no sign in the data that AI is costing anybody their job right now, but we are studying the future of AI and what it means for the workforce, so we've got a big taskforce on that,' Hassett said during an appearance on CNBC's 'Squawk Box.'
The remarks come at an awkward moment for the administration. Over the past several months, major tech firms including Amazon, Meta, Oracle, Coinbase and Cloudflare have all announced fresh rounds of layoffs while simultaneously talking up AI-powered productivity gains.
Many of those companies are no longer framing AI as a future possibility. Instead, executives increasingly describe it as a technology already changing how work gets done — and how many employees are needed to do it.
Tech Companies That Named AI for Job Cuts
Payments company Block cut nearly 4,000 employees earlier this year, reducing its workforce by almost half. At the time, CFO Amrita Ahuja said the company wanted to operate with 'smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work.'
Software company Atlassian also slashed around 1,600 jobs in March, saying the move would help fund further investments in AI and enterprise sales.
The latest cuts have added to growing anxiety across the tech industry, where AI tools are increasingly capable of writing software code, automating internal workflows, generating marketing content and handling customer service tasks that previously required large teams.
Last week, Coinbase reduced its headcount by 14%, with CEO Brian Armstrong pointing directly to AI's growing capabilities.
'Over the past year, I've watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks,' Armstrong wrote in a public statement. 'Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated.'
Cloudflare delivered an even starker message while announcing roughly 1,100 job cuts. The company said 'agentic AI' had fundamentally changed how it operates internally, with employees across engineering, HR, finance and marketing now running thousands of AI agent sessions daily.
Despite those developments, Hassett argued that companies adopting AI often experience stronger growth and may ultimately create more employment opportunities rather than fewer.
'Companies that adopt AI tend to see rapid revenue growth and even employment growth,' he said, adding that firms failing to adopt the technology risk falling behind competitors.
