Nearly 750 executives in the Duke/Federal Reserve CFO Survey expect AI to barely touch total headcount — aggregate employment down less than 0.4% in 2026. What shifts is the mix, over the next three years: routine clerical work down more than 2 percentage points of employment share
The Duke/Federal Reserve CFO Survey gathered expectations from nearly 750 executives regarding the impact of AI on their workforce. These executives anticipate that AI will lead to a less than 0.4% decline in aggregate employment by 2026. However, they expect a shift in the composition of tasks, with routine clerical work decreasing by over 2 percentage points of employment share within three years.
Verified 2026-08-13
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Finance chiefs expect AI to reshape which jobs exist more than how many, with routine office work shrinking.
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- AI hiring intensity doesn't track the size of a country's AI industry. Stanford's 2026 AI Index, drawing on Lightcast's job-postings database across dozens of countries, found the 2025 leader for AI-skill job-posting share by a wide margin was Singapore, at 4.69% of all job postings — nearly double the 2.6% share in the United States
- Stanford's 2026 AI Index, citing Lightcast's job-postings database, found that even as employer demand shifted toward newer agentic-AI skills, mentions of generative AI skills specifically in US AI job postings still grew, from 2024 to 2025, by 111%
- The information sector — telecom, media, tech services — led US corporate AI hiring in 2025. Lightcast data cited in Stanford's 2026 AI Index found AI skills required in 13.2% of the sector's job postings, up from 7.8% in 2024
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