🤖 An analysis of data from 2.4 million employees across 142 large and medium-sized companies showed that about 5.3% of laid-off workers return to their previous employers. This number is steadily rising during the mass adoption of AI agents, indicating serious miscalculations by management in planning and assessing the real effectiveness of the technology.
“The idea that AI can replace absolutely every job has yet to be proven,” notes Andrea Derler, chief analyst at Visier. According to her, artificial intelligence has become “a very convenient explanation for layoffs,” allowing companies to deflect responsibility for personnel decisions. In practice, AI fails to handle many tasks requiring critical thinking, context, flexibility, and interpersonal interaction that were previously performed by human employees.
The growth in rehiring indicates a broader strategic planning problem. Company leaders, caught up in the technology hype, rushed to cut staff, expecting quick replacement of humans with algorithms. Now they are forced to acknowledge that real automation requires more time, resources, and a thoughtful approach.
95% of companies see no ROI from AI
The failure to replace employees with AI is confirmed by other studies, including MIT data: 95% of organizations do not see significant returns from AI investments. Many CEOs underestimated the complexity of the tasks to be automated, overlooked the costs of deploying infrastructure and related technologies, and ignored the risks of losing experience and expertise from departing employees.
Instead of a carefully planned AI rollout, many companies acted under the influence of neural network hype and promises of quick economic gains. The result — layoffs that not only failed to accelerate automation but also created additional business challenges.
Companies that rushed layoffs for AI are now facing double expenses. According to Orgvue, for every dollar saved on layoffs, employers spend $1.27 on associated costs — unemployment insurance, severance pay, taxes, and other administrative expenses.
In addition, costs are incurred for rehiring and bringing back previously laid-off specialists who should not have been let go initially. In practice, this turns “savings” into a significant financial burden and shows that rushed decisions can be costly for companies.
The AI boom becomes a workforce crisis
The trend of returning employees “laid off for AI” demonstrates that technological hype led to ill-considered personnel decisions. Companies mass-layoff staff expecting rapid automation, but AI proved unprepared to replace human skills and experience.
Visier research notes an important shift: while investors celebrated news of “AI-driven layoffs,” the real effectiveness of such measures is in question. The rehiring of former employees becomes an indirect acknowledgment of mistakes in AI strategy and a signal to the market for a more cautious and considered approach to digital transformation and automation.
⚠️ Companies are now forced to revise their plans, implement hybrid work models combining AI and human labor, and invest in employee training. Ultimately, this experience shows: technology should complement humans, not fully replace them, and hasty layoffs for a trendy idea often result in a costly lesson.
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