Apollo's chief economist says there's no AI jobs crisis. The thread says look at who's actually hiring
Torsten Slok points to job openings back above one per unemployed worker and 172,000 new May payrolls as proof ChatGPT isn't replacing anyone. Commenters say nearly all of that growth is one sector.
The argument from the top: if AI were displacing workers, openings would collapse and unemployment would climb. Instead there are more jobs than workers.
The counter from people who hire: strip out healthcare and most sectors are flat or shrinking, junior software roles are near zero, and a chunk of 'openings' are ghost jobs that cost nothing to post.
A line from a Google engineer that stuck: you almost get laughed at asking for headcount now.
The case that the crisis is a no-show
Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, makes a clean macro argument: the predicted AI jobs crisis hasn't arrived. Job openings per unemployed worker have climbed back above 1.0 — more jobs available than workers to fill them — and May 2026 nonfarm payrolls rose by 172,000. His logic is symmetrical: if AI were displacing labor, you'd see openings collapse and unemployment rise. The data shows the opposite, so, in his words, there are "no signs of workers being replaced by ChatGPT." He even floats that AI-powered business formation may be creating jobs.
It's a tidy argument resting on two aggregate numbers. The thread's whole project was to disaggregate them.
"New jobs exclusively are held up by addition in healthcare"
The first crack: the headline payroll number is carried by one sector.
"New jobs exclusively are held up by addition in healthcare industry, almost every other sector is seeing some negative movement. A lot of job openings … are just fake jobs." — a commenter critiquing the Chief Economist's methodology
That's not a one-off observation — it's a known demographic trend:
"The shift toward healthcare employment is a very long running trend driven by the greying of the Baby Boom generation." — Bjorn Westergard, the thread's submitter
The metric itself is soft
If "job openings" can be posted for free by an AI applicant-tracking system, the denominator stops meaning what it used to.
"AI ATS systems have made posting jobs 'cheap', such that too companies post jobs that don't exist (ie 'ghost jobs') … to keep up appearances they're hiring." — a commenter on why openings data is unreliable
Where the floor actually fell out: junior roles
The most consistent first-hand signal was about entry-level hiring, including from inside big tech.
"For junior positions in particular, there are close to zero openings. You almost get laughed at asking for headcount now." — a Google employee
Even someone who runs a job board and largely agrees there's no openings collapse drew the same line about the shape of the work:
"I run a job search site and I don't see a crisis in terms of job openings even for SWE — but there is very clear signal that AI is deeply getting embedded in every SWE job." — the operator of a job-search site
And the skeptics of the skeptics had a point too: a chunk of the weakness in tech hiring may be the post-ZIRP interest-rate hangover, not AI at all. The honest read sits between the two charts. The aggregate labor market is fine. The entry ramp into knowledge work is not — and an economy-wide openings ratio is exactly the lens that hides it.
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