Tech Workers Who Skip AI Are 3x More Likely To Get Laid Off, Survey Finds. For India's IT Sector, The Math Is Brutal

Published 18 June 2026 · tech

Tech Workers Who Skip AI Are 3x More Likely To Get Laid Off, Survey Finds. For India's IT Sector, The Math Is Brutal Published By

Tech Workers Who Skip AI Are 3x More Likely To Get Laid Off, Survey Finds. For India's IT Sector, The Math Is Brutal Published By, Last Updated: June 18, 2026, 19:16 IST Gallup data shows tech workers who don't use AI regularly face triple the layoff risk. For India's si million-strong IT workforce, the numbers hit harder than anywhere else. Rapid Read News18 Tech workers who do not use artificial intelligence at least once a month face three times the layoff risk of colleagues who do, according to new research from Gallup. The finding arrived on Tuesday from a February survey of more than 23,000 US workers, including 660 respondents who lost their jobs to layoffs. Among tech workers who used AI monthly or more, the predicted probability of being laid off was roughly 6 per cent. For those who used it less frequently, the figure was 18 per cent. The gap held after controlling for age, education, industry, and the length of time since being laid off, according to Gallup researchers. Outside the technology sector, infrequent AI users also face elevated layoff risk compared to more frequent users, though the gap is smaller. The data produced one striking contradiction. Only about 1 per cent of laid-off workers attributed their job loss directly to AI, with most citing organisational restructuring, cost-cutting, or economic conditions instead. The Gallup researchers themselves said this figure may understate AI’s indirect influence on layoff decisions. Jim Harter, chief scientist for Gallup’s workplace management and wellbeing practice, said the disconnect surprised him. “They didn’t just blame AI," he said. That gap between worker perception and corporate action is wide. AI was the top reason companies cited for job cuts last month, accounting for roughly 40 per cent of such announcements, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Harter cautioned against reading the numbers as a case for measuring employee productivity by AI usage frequency. Tying performance reviews to how often someone prompts a chatbot would push workers to game the system. “The real bottom line is: Are they more productive?" he said. China’s Parallel Problem The same pressure is playing out differently in China, where Beijing has set a target of 70 per cent AI adoption across key sectors by next year while simultaneously telling companies to protect jobs. The country’s largest private-sector tech firms, from Alibaba to Tencent, are leading AI deployment but their executives have taken pains to signal commitment to employment. JD.com founder Richard Liu recently pledged to do everything possible to protect his company’s 900,000-strong workforce from automation. The pledge runs against JD.com’s own reported operations. As recently as last year, Liu told a conference that robots had replaced 90 per cent of humans at the company’s Beijing sorting centre. Alibaba, valued at $266 billion, has quietly begun headcount reductions through gradual cuts and attrition, according to Reuters, citing an engineer at the company. Citibank estimates that 9.6 per cent of Chinese jobs, roughly 70 million roles, are highly exposed to AI-driven displacement at a time when youth unemployment stands at around 17 per cent. A record 12.7 million graduates are entering the workforce this summer. Reuters Breakingviews described Beijing’s conflicting policy goals as a constraint that could slow Chinese AI innovation relative to Western competitors who face fewer restrictions on restructuring. What It Means for India The Gallup numbers land differently in India, where the stakes around IT employment are not simply corporate but socioeconomic. India’s IT sector employs roughly six million people and has, for over three decades, absorbed a substantial share of the country’s engineering graduates, with the sector previously taking in around 1.5 million new hires per year.