{"id":492070,"date":"2026-06-10T07:52:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T07:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/492070\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T07:52:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T07:52:24","slug":"economic-slump-not-ai-is-the-real-job-killer-says-linkedin-executive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/492070\/","title":{"rendered":"Economic slump, not AI, is the real job killer, says LinkedIn executive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Artificial intelligence<\/a> is not to blame for a slump in hiring, a LinkedIn<\/a> executive said during London <\/a>Tech Week.<\/p>\n

Blake Lawit, the technology company\u2019s chief global affairs and legal officer, said that while hiring rates were at their lowest in the UK<\/a>, the post-Covid economy rather than AI <\/a>adoption was to blame.<\/p>\n

Hiring in the UK had slowed down 24 per cent since the pandemic and had been dropping by about 10 per cent year over year, according to LinkedIn\u2019s user data.<\/p>\n

\u201cHiring is slow, it’s slower than it has been. But as far as we can tell, that hiring slowness seems much more driven by macroeconomic conditions like a rise of interest rates that we saw in 2022,\u201d he said, speaking at an event on AI and the future of work at foreign affairs think tank Chatham House in London.<\/p>\n

Job transitions on LinkedIn were also at a 10-year low, with people staying longer with their employers.<\/p>\n

He said the UK was seeing \u201csmall ‘c’ conservatism\u201d from businesses where hiring was concerned. \u201cThat leads to less movement from the job market.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he insisted this was not caused by AI \u2013 as LinkedIn\u2019s data showed that jobs that were likely to be affected by AI were not substantially more affected than those that were less at risk. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou might say, well, how do you know this isn’t due to AI? We’ve really looked at the industries and the parts of the career that you’d expect to be most impacted [by AI], and while we do see that hiring rates are down, it’s not down to a greater degree than other places,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn professions like marketing, customer service, admin. Yes, the marketing, the hiring rates down, but not different than the rest of the economy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Technology company bosses have repeatedly spoken of huge job loses as their AI models are introduced to businesses and the public \u2013 but have recently moderated their tone following a backlash. Last month, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang accused employers who had been making cuts years before the AI roll-out of trying to \u201csound smart\u201d by blaming the technology. <\/p>\n

But there has been growing criticism of the UK government\u2019s handling of the job market, after it raised National Insurance contributions for employers, and the minimum wage above inflation.<\/p>\n

Unemployment is expected to increase by more than 400,000 people by the end of 2028, compared with 2024, the British Chambers of Commerce warned last week.<\/p>\n

Baroness Minouche Shafik, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief economic adviser, said there was \u201cno evidence yet of massive displacement as a result of AI\u201d, according to government assessments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI personally don’t think you can identify the jobs that are at risk. If you type into any AI agent which jobs are at risk of AI you’ll get a different list, because nobody really knows, and it’s very fluid,\u201d she said, speaking at the same event.<\/p>\n

She called for a better \u201csafety net\u201d that would tide people over in case of job loss, and would include opportunities to retrain.<\/p>\n

She opposed proposals for a universal basic income, which have been raised by technology employers as a way of supporting populations when AI and automation replace most jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom an economic point of view you can’t scale. You can’t generate enough surplus to pay people enough to be idle,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The UK government announced a new AI training scheme this week to help young people in Northern England who are at risk of becoming unemployed, as well as a \u00a320 million package to encourage early career jobs.<\/p>\n

It also launched an AI assistant for unemployed people looking for work.<\/p>\n

Ferrari for the mind<\/p>\n

Kensington Olympia is the headquarters for most of Tech Week\u2019s activities and speakers, who have included Mr Starmer, former chancellor George Osborne, now of Open AI, as well as dozens of other business leaders.<\/p>\n

The Prince of Wales will visit on Wednesday, to highlight how data and technology can be used to identify risks that can lead to homelessness. <\/p>\n

Speaking at Olympia’s AI Arena, Perplexity co-founder Aravind Srinivas adapted a phrase by Steve Jobs about computers being the \u201cbicycle for the mind\u201d, to say that AI was the \u201cFerrari for the mind\u201d, empowering people beyond previous capabilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIBM owned the mainframe but missed the PC. Microsoft owned the PC, completely missed mobile. Nokia owned mobile, but missed the smartphone,\u201d said Mr Srinivas. Don\u2019t miss what AI can do for you was his message.<\/p>\n

For the thousands of delegates gathered, the opportunity AI creates is expansion: turning start-ups into thriving businesses.<\/p>\n

Among the exhibitors was Mick McNeil, chief executive and founder of UK-based Deliverance AI, which exited stealth mode this week, intent on building operating systems for sovereign enterprise AI. <\/p>\n

Mr McNeil told The National of his plans to expand to Abu Dhabi later this year. <\/p>\n

He said the UAE was moving faster than anyone in Europe in embracing AI and creating opportunities for businesses on a global scale.<\/p>\n

Lucy Liu, co-founder and president at FinTech payments company Airwallex, told The National the founders and companies \u201cthat will be successful tomorrow are the ones that are ready to scale globally from day one.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the journey we\u2019ve been through at Airwallex, building independently for 10 years \u2013 and almost failing several times \u2013 was incredibly tough, but ultimately it\u2019s the decision that\u2019s defined who we are.\u201d <\/p>\n

She said the UK and Europe are a hotbed for tech talent while in the Middle East and the UAE in particular, there is a lot of \u201cuntapped potential\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe recognise the growth trajectory for the EMEA region and are acting accordingly, with over $1 billion investment planned across the region over the next five years. <\/p>\n

The company has committed to developing AI-native practitioners across the business. She said: \u201cThis is an invaluable mindset that will fast-track our future expansion plans and create stronger opportunities for us to support our partners from the UK to the UAE, and beyond.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artificial intelligence is not to blame for a slump in hiring, a LinkedIn executive said during London Tech…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60,99,1284,329,80,21854],"class_list":["post-492070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-london","tag-standard","tag-story","tag-technology","tag-uk-bureau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}