Nobody Is Getting Fired, and Nobody Is Getting Hired. Is AI to Blame?

If you are looking for work right now, the official numbers finally match how it feels.

The US added just 29,000 jobs in September 2026, less than half of what forecasters expected, and July and August were revised down by a combined 60,000 (BLS, St. Louis Fed). At the same time, almost nobody is being fired. Weekly jobless claims fell to 197,000 and have stayed under 200,000 for four straight weeks, the longest run since 1969 (Marketplace).

Economists call this a "low-hire, low-fire" market. Monster career expert Vicki Salemi had a better description: "It reminds me of a frozen pond."

And over the past week, as HubSpot, Amazon and reportedly Netflix announced cuts, one argument took over LinkedIn and every jobs thread online: is AI the reason nobody is hiring?

#What the numbers actually say

Here is the September picture in one place:

• Unemployment: 4.2%, or 7.1 million people (BLS).
• Long searches: 1.9 million people, 27.1% of the unemployed, have been looking for 27 weeks or more (BLS).
• Time out of work: the average unemployed person has been searching for 24.8 weeks, up from 19.4 weeks in November 2023 (SHRM).
• Slow hiring: job postings stay open an average of 61 days, and 77 for engineering roles (ManpowerGroup, via SHRM).
• Pay: hourly earnings grew 3% over the year, the slowest pace since May 2021 (SHRM).
• Openings: US job openings fell to 7.08 million in August, a five-month low (Fortune).

Glassdoor chief economist Daniel Zhao summed up the human cost: because of the "sluggish hiring rate", people who lose a job are staying unemployed longer (SHRM).

So the freeze is real. The fight is over what caused it.

#The case that AI is to blame

It is the number one reason companies give. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas tracks the reasons employers cite for job cuts. So far in 2026, AI has been named in 120,136 cuts, about 21% of all cuts, more than any other reason (Challenger).

The most AI-exposed industry is cutting hardest. Tech job cuts are up 54% this year to 165,925, and tech accounts for 29% of all 2026 cuts, the most of any industry (Challenger).

Junior roles are drying up. The average age of a new hire has climbed to 42, up from 40.5 in 2022, according to Revelio Labs data reported by Fortune. If AI can do more of the entry-level work, the argument goes, companies simply stop opening those roles rather than firing anyone. That fits a market where layoffs are low but hiring is frozen. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned AI could disrupt half of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years (Windows Latest).

#The case that AI is a scapegoat

Layoffs are actually down. Total job cuts through September are 573,195, down 39% from the same period in 2025 (Challenger). If AI were wiping out jobs at scale, you would expect that number to be rising, not falling.

Employers list plenty of other reasons. Even Andy Challenger did not lead with AI when explaining the slowdown. He pointed to "high energy costs, an uncertain war in Iran, a rate hike that could make hiring more expensive," and rising healthcare costs, adding that "companies are in a wait-and-see period right now" (Challenger). Kyle Moore, chief economist at The Century Foundation, said erratic tariff policy "makes it difficult to make consistent hiring decisions" (Marketplace).

Some companies say it is not AI at all. When HubSpot announced it was cutting nearly 660 jobs, about 7% of staff, CEO Yamini Rangan said: "This is not driven by AI-related efficiencies" (Boston.com). She framed it as a reorganization around the company's AI strategy, not people being replaced by it.

"AI-washing" is a real suspicion. Saying "AI" in a layoff announcement sounds forward-looking to investors. A Gartner survey of 350 executives found that 80% of companies piloting AI had cut staff, and the cut rates were almost the same whether the AI was paying off or not (Fortune). In other words, the cuts were not tracking what the technology actually delivered.

The long-run estimates are smaller than the headlines. This month Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman shared MIT economist Daron Acemoglu's estimate that AI will replace roughly 5% of US work within 10 years, calling job-loss fears "overblown" (Windows Latest). Acemoglu himself calls it "admittedly no more than a guesstimate", so treat it with the same caution as the scary forecasts.

Historically, the market is not broken. The St. Louis Fed's take on the same report was that the labor market "remained healthy in September from a historical perspective" (St. Louis Fed). Unemployment at 4.2% is low by long-term standards. The problem is movement, not mass unemployment.

#Both sides at a glance

#Where AI has clearly changed hiring

Here is the part both sides can agree on. Whatever AI is doing to the number of jobs, it has already transformed how people apply and get screened.

LinkedIn CEO Dan Shapero says job seekers now send about 30% more applications than before the pandemic, many of them polished with AI (Fortune). The result, in his words, is "a sea of applicants" that "look pretty similar." His conclusion should worry every job seeker:

It's gotten harder and harder for employers to know who can actually do the job anymore.

Employers have answered with more AI on their side: AI resume screening, AI skills tests and AI interviews. Fortune cites Greenhouse data that about 63% of US job seekers have already been interviewed by AI. We covered that debate in are AI job interviews fair?

So you get a loop. Fewer openings, more applications per opening, applications that all read the same, and more automated filtering to cope. ManpowerGroup's Ger Doyle put it well: "The market is no longer defined simply by how many people employers hire, but by how precisely they hire" (SHRM).

#Our take

AI is probably not the main reason hiring froze this autumn. The timing lines up far better with interest rates, tariffs, energy prices and general uncertainty, and layoffs falling 39% is hard to square with an AI jobs apocalypse. Some companies are clearly using AI as a tidy explanation for cuts they wanted to make anyway.

But "AI is a scapegoat" is not the same as "AI changes nothing." Entry-level hiring is genuinely thinner, and the application process has been rebuilt around AI on both sides. For a job seeker, the cause of the freeze matters less than this: when there are fewer openings and more applicants who look alike, the people who get hired are the ones who make it obvious they can do the job.

#How to get hired in a frozen job market

1. Plan for a longer search. The average search now runs close to six months (SHRM). Budget for it, set weekly targets you control (applications, conversations, practice sessions), and don't read silence as a verdict on you.
2. Send fewer, sharper applications. With volume up 30% and openings at a five-month low, spraying 100 generic applications mostly adds to the noise. Pick roles you fit and tailor your resume to each job description.
3. Beat the sameness with specifics. If every AI-polished resume says "results-driven team player", yours should say what you did, for whom, and by how much. Numbers, named tools and concrete outcomes are the one thing a generic AI rewrite can't invent for you.
4. Get past the screen first. Most applications are filtered by software before a person reads them. Use the job's own language and a simple layout so an ATS can read your resume.
5. Practise proving you can do the job. Employers say they can't tell who can actually do the work. The interview is where you settle that, so rehearse out loud: specific stories, STAR structure, real numbers. Expect skills tests and AI interviews and practise those formats too.
6. Think twice before leaving a job. The raise from switching jobs has shrunk to about 8%, versus 5% for staying, the smallest gap in seven years (Bank of America Institute, via Fortune). If you have a job, a slow market is a reason to search quietly, not to quit first.
7. Be patient with the best roles. ManpowerGroup says "the roles that matter most also take the longest to fill", with engineering postings open 77 days on average (SHRM). A slow process is normal right now. Follow up politely, keep other options moving, and keep practising.

If you are applying and hearing nothing, start with why you might not be getting interviews. The market is slow, but it is not closed: 29,000 jobs is still 29,000 people who got hired last month.