Artificial intelligence is already eliminating jobs, but not the kind that need a New York office, Empire State Realty Trust CEO Tony Malkin says.
Bisnow/Ciara Long
Empire State Realty Trust CEO Tony Malkin onstage at Bisnow’s 2025 New York City State of the Market event.
Consulting firms have issued warnings for years that AI could eliminate roles in the near future. Now, companies including Salesforce are announcing imminent plans to replace workers with AI.
But Malkin is far from concerned about the ramifications for ESRT and other Manhattan office landlords, who collectively inked more than 30M SF in leases in the first three quarters of the year, according to Avison Young.
“It’s unlikely that you’ll find people in high-value-added businesses, and that’s primarily what’s in New York City, who lose jobs because of AI,” Malkin said onstage Wednesday at Bisnow’s annual NYC State of the Market event. “It is far more likely that you will see people who will lose jobs because they don’t use AI.”
In 2023, McKinsey predicted that AI could lead to as many as 375 million jobs lost, while Goldman Sachs’ estimate was 300 million. A year later, Citi estimated that around 54% of banking jobs could be automated, Bloomberg reported.
And at the start of this year, those cuts started coming.
Language learning app Duolingo laid off around 10% of its contract workers as it pivoted to heavier AI use in January. A few months later, payments service Klarna said it had replaced around 40% of its workforce by investing in AI. And in June, tech giant Amazon said it aims to cut 4,000 jobs over the coming years as it incorporates more AI. It laid off almost 700 NYC workers last month.
ESRT owns 7.8M SF of office space across NYC, most of which is Class-A, and expects to have signed a total of 1M SF of office leases by the end of the year.
While Malkin said the predictions that AI will come for white-collar jobs en masse are wrong, he does believe it will affect hiring practices — but not in a way that will affect office leasing.
“The person who uses the AI happens to sit next to someone who doesn’t — well, if you pay these people, who would you want?” he said.
Employers will choose candidates who are already incorporating the tech into their workflows, speeding up some tasks dramatically through automation.
“Nothing is steady state. There’s always rocks,” he told Bisnow a few moments after stepping off the stage. “I just think we need to think about where can it make people more productive versus where can it replace people.”