Are you tired of hearing that AI is taking over all the jobs and the future is bleak? Well, it’s time for a reality check. Despite the mass layoffs in 2024, the total employment in Big Tech is still significantly higher than in 2019. I’m using 2019 as a baseline because, let’s be honest, 2020 was a funky year for obvious reasons.
Take Google, for example. It currently has 187,000 employees, which is a whopping 57% higher than its 2019 workforce of 119,000. Meta is another example, with 76,000 employees today, a 68% increase from its 2019 workforce of 45,000. Even Microsoft’s US employee count has increased by 31% from 96,000 in 2019 to 126,000 today.
These numbers are staggering, and they put the ‘AI is taking over’ narrative into perspective. To put it into context, the overall US population grew by only about 4-5% during this time. So, all the ‘hair on fire’ comments about AI replacing human workers are simply not based in reality.
It’s time to take a step back, look at the data, and realize that Big Tech is still creating more jobs than ever before.