No evidence AI has hurt jobs at scale, a staffing CEO argues
He estimates U.S. unemployment hovered near 3.8 percent, and says demand for developers has risen.
WSJ What's News · The Tesla SpaceX Mega Merger is UnderwaySander van 't Noordende, the chief executive of the staffing company Ronstadt, was asked whether AI was affecting jobs in his business. The interviewer, Luke Vargas, asked the question after van 't Noordende reported almost 4 percent organic growth, and noted that he is making money off how the job market is working now.
Van 't Noordende answered that there is "no evidence whatsoever that AI is impacting the labor market at scale." He repeated the distinction in his own terms, saying there is "no AI impact at scale" but there is "impact in pockets."
Van 't Noordende said the jobs impacted are "your administrative jobs, clerks, accounting clerks, finance clerks, marketing, design, content fabrication, customer service in a call center or on a chat type of work."
On the larger picture, van 't Noordende said "Unemployment levels are at historically low levels in most developed markets." He said, "In the US, it's been hovering around 3.8, 3.9 for I don't know how many quarters, maybe 16 or 20 quarters after COVID."
What he said he sees instead is growth in staffing. He said operational staffing in the United States, people who work in plants, distribution centers, and airports, was up almost 20 percent, that professional staffing was back to growth, and that large companies were hiring more through his recruitment outsourcing business. He also said demand for software developers has risen because even though Claude can do everything, there is still automation work to do and projects once out of reach are now in reach, so more software engineers are needed.
His point returned to where he started, that there is "no evidence whatsoever" of AI hurting the labor market at scale.
Questions people ask
If AI can write code, why would companies need more developers?
Tools that write code can lower the cost of building software, so companies approve more projects. Someone still has to define the problem, check the results, and maintain the systems. That can increase total demand for developers even as each developer becomes more productive.
Which jobs are growing fastest in the U.S. right now?
Healthcare and hospitality have been large drivers of recent job growth. Many of those roles involve direct care, cooking, cleaning, and serving people. They are difficult to automate and often require physical presence.