Measuring the AI Hiring Shift
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A 2026 study by Khosravi & Liu, built on the same LinkUp dataset (77.8M postings, 186 countries), finds firms changed what they hire for more than how much.
The shift is in the mix of jobs, not the total. AI isn't erasing jobs across the board, it's reallocating them: automating routine work while creating new roles built around deploying AI.
Total daily active job listings in the US have held at a 7–8M band since early 2022; what's moving is the composition underneath.
Routine roles are shrinking. The work that's easiest to automate is contracting first. Entry-level listings are down ~70% from their 2022 peak, and customer service rep listings are down ~30%.
AI-implementation roles are growing. Postings for forward-deployed engineers—those hired to put AI to work across an organization—jumped 15x+ in the last year, from ~300 listings to over 5,000
These jobs fall under titles like "Senior AI Solutions Deployment Developer" and "Applied AI Engineer."
An old Palantir role, revived: AI doesn't plug in on its own—it has to be architected into a company's data, workflows, and strategy with forward-deployed engineers.
Data: LinkUp active job listings, visualized in Compass. Academic reference: Khosravi, F. & Liu, E. M., "Generative AI and Firm Hiring Demand: Evidence from Advanced and Developing Economies," March 2026.
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