The robots aren’t taking your job, at least not yet. That’s the bold takeaway from Apollo Global Management‘s chief economist, who said the data tells a story that cuts against years of AI-driven anxiety in the labour market.
Torsten Slok, Partner and Chief Economist at Apollo, published a note last week pointing to weekly ADP employment data showing “zero evidence of job losses because of AI.” Far from displacing workers, the AI boom appears to be generating demand for labour and pushing wages higher in key sectors, he argued.
‘No evidence of AI job losses,’ says Apollo economist
‘Many firms are hiring AI implementation experts, and the data centre buildout is putting upward pressure on salaries for AI experts and on prices of semiconductors, equipment, and energy,” Sløk wrote. “The bottom line is that the AI spending boom is stoking both employment and inflation.”
He also repeated this idea from an earlier April blog, saying cheaper technology does not shrink industries. Instead, it often pushes productivity and employment higher.
Data shows strong hiring
The ADP report showed that private companies added nearly 110,000 jobs in April, suggesting the job market is still expanding despite all the fears around AI.
Sløk said this is why worries about AI replacing workers may be overdone right now. In his view, the real trend is that companies are shifting toward hiring people with AI-related skills rather than cutting jobs overall.
These roles are often called AI implementation experts. In simple terms, they are people who help companies plug AI tools into real-day-to-day work, like business systems, customer service, and internal operations. It is less about building AI from scratch and more about making it useful inside companies.
At the same time, a huge amount of building work is going on behind AI. New data centres are being built, semiconductor factories are expanding, and energy demand is rising fast. All of this is creating more jobs in construction, engineering, and tech supply chains, while also pushing salaries higher for AI-skilled workers.
Sløk said, “The AI spending boom is stoking both employment and inflation,” he wrote. He also pointed out that this wave of data centre expansion is pushing up prices for semiconductors, equipment, and energy.
What is Jevons paradox?
To explain what is happening, Sløk uses an old economic idea called Jevons paradox. Back in the 1800s, economist William Stanley Jevons noticed something unusual. When machines became more efficient at using coal, people expected coal use to drop. But the opposite happened, coal use actually increased because it became cheaper and more useful in more places.
Sløk says something similar is happening with AI today. As AI tools become cheaper, faster, and more powerful, companies are not simply using fewer workers. Instead, they are finding new ways to use both AI and human labor together, which expands overall business activity.
Fear of job loss vs real-world warnings
Even though Sløk’s view is optimistic, not everyone agrees.
Big tech leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have previously warned that AI could reshape entire job categories. Amodei even said last year that AI could eliminate up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs.
However, some tech and finance leaders actually agree with Sløk’s view. Box CEO Aaron Levie, Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, and White House AI and Crypto advisor David Sacks have all supported the idea that AI could boost hiring instead of shrinking it.
A survey by EY found that around 60% of financial services CEOs believe AI investment will keep headcount stable or even increase it in 2026.
Still, Sløk stopped short of ruling out bigger changes in the future. For now, though, the more immediate concern may not be unemployment, but an economy that is running hotter because of AI-driven investment and demand