Overview
- Block confirmed plans to cut about 4,000 roles, roughly 40% of its workforce, attributing the move to AI-enabled restructuring as its shares jumped about 15%.
- Goldman Sachs reported no meaningful economywide link between AI adoption and productivity so far, even as firms that quantified results cited roughly 30% gains in customer support and software development.
- The same Goldman analysis found only 10% of S&P 500 companies quantified AI impacts and 1% tied them to earnings, while AI-referencing employers trimmed job openings by 12% versus 8% overall and long-run displacement is forecast at 6%–7%.
- Federal Reserve officials are divided on whether AI is disinflationary or inflationary, with comments highlighting potential higher structural unemployment, significant investment outlays, and uncertainty around how fast AI effects will filter into prices and jobs.
- Bank of America dismissed a near-term AI-driven collapse, noting a cooling yet stable labor market with 4.3% unemployment and just 7% of January’s announced job cuts attributed to AI, even as companies test agentic AI and cheaper model access pressures pricing.