The Revision
What the January Jobs Report Actually Says About AI
The headline number looked good. The U.S. economy added 130,000 jobs in January, beating expectations. Unemployment ticked down to 4.3%. If you stopped there, you’d feel fine.
But underneath was a revision that tells a different story. The Bureau of Labor Statistics corrected total 2025 job creation down from 584,000 to just 181,000. That’s15,000 jobs per month in an economy of 158 million workers. That’s the largest downward revision in a decade, and it makes 2025 the weakest year for job growth outside of a recession since 2003.
And the gains that did exist were remarkably concentrated. Healthcare and social assistance accounted for nearly all of January’s job creation. Construction added 33,000, driven largely by data center building. Financial activities lost 22,000. Federal government shed 34,000. Strip out healthcare, and the number tells a very different story.
The AI signal is getting louder. Challenger, Gray & Christmas attributed over 54,000 job cuts directly to AI in 2025. Goldman Sachs found that unemployment among 20- to 30-year-olds in tech-exposed occupations rose nearly three percentage points. Entry-level postings are down 35% in two years. Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft, and IBM all explicitly cited AI when reducing headcount. Salesforce’s CEO said AI is handling 30 to 50 percent of their workload, not as a projection, but as a current reality.
Obviously, AI isn’t the only factor here. Tariffs, immigration shifts, federal cuts, and post-pandemic corrections all contribute. But AI is now a visible part of the equation, and the labor market is starting to reflect it.
What we are thinking about with our clients.
If AI continues compressing headcount, something deeper has to change: the way companies are designed. For decades, growth meant hiring. Scale meant layers: more people, more managers, more tools to manage the coordination. That model is already under pressure.
Let’s be honest, many leaders use those layers and headcount to justify their own compensation structure. It’s not a great system.
When smaller teams can produce what used to require much larger ones, organizations don’t just need fewer people. They need a different structure entirely. Flatter. Faster. Fewer layers of approval. The roles that remain become more cross-functional, more autonomous, and significantly harder to replace.
And that’s the opportunity, especially for individuals. If companies are moving toward fewer, higher-leverage people, then the person who knows how to work with AI isn’t just employable. They’re essential. The individual who can use AI to multiply their output becomes the new definition of top talent.
For anyone investing in AI right now, like learning how to integrate it into real workflows, not just experimenting casually, this is a massive personal advantage. In a market where organizations are getting leaner and entry-level roles are thinning out, the ability to operate with AI is a skill that compounds. You become harder to replace, more valuable to your team, and better positioned for the roles that will define what comes next.
The companies that figure this out will be smaller, faster, and disproportionately effective. The people who drove that shift will be the ones everyone’s trying to hire.
Links
January 2026 Jobs Report: Revisions to 2025 Data Made an Already Bad Year Worse
Indeed’s Hiring Lab calls 2025 “an exceptionally weak year by almost any standard.” The sector concentration is striking.
Revised Economic Numbers Inject Uncertainty Into Jobs Market
A good breakdown with former Labor Department chief economist Harry Holzer on what the revisions actually mean and why the headline number is misleading.
OpenAI Unveils Frontier, a Product for Building ‘AI Co-Workers’
“The new platform, launched amid market fears over AI’s disruption to software, is aimed at helping businesses develop AI agents that work alongside humans”
Breaking down the business of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics
SpeedStudio Podcast:
EP. 127 Bad Bunny at Super Bowl, Michael Garrison at Casa Basso
This episode finds Nikki and Chad in the Studio after a huge week and a day behind on the pod. They chat about how Bad Bunny won the Super Bowl, whether people actually like Kid Rock, the pro team launch week, the Culture of Speed campaigns, how bad things can lead to good things, (from Chad’s broken bones), and how Nikki’s feeling positive about 2026 the year of the Fire Horse. They check in with Michael at Casa Basso in Girona, the new Palta III, new Tune wheels, and what tires he’s running (he has no idea). They also get into the diabolical strategy of Pop Up Bagels in the ATL, why welcoming competition is the answer, looking a gift horse in the mouth, getting bricked up and locked in, and the fact that Tylenol simply does not work.