Ramp report finds AI adopters are growing headcount faster

Fears of AI-driven job losses have steadily mounted in the U.S. as corporate layoffs make headlines. Through May of 2026, close to 90,000 job cuts in the country were tied to AI, and some accounts project that up to 15% of U.S. jobs will be eliminated by the technology over the next five years. However, a new research report from Ramp, a fintech company, and Revelio Labs, a workforce intelligence firm, complicates this gloomy outlook. By tracking enterprise AI spend and workforce records across nearly 22,000 companies, the co-authors found that companies spending heavily on AI are growing their headcount faster, even within entry-level roles.

The report focuses on what it terms high-intensity adopters, defined as firms that spend an average of $30 per employee per month on AI. These high-intensity adopters saw an overall headcount increase of 10.2%. This finding stands in contrast to data from investment bank Goldman Sachs, which found that AI has erased about 16,000 net jobs per month over the past year, with junior workers often bearing the brunt. Yet, among the tech-forward firms analyzed in the Ramp and Revelio Labs report, entry-level headcount actually rose by 12%.

This divergence highlights a shift from labor substitution to firm expansion. The report notes that for software and technology firms, AI makes core outputs cheaper and faster to produce, including writing code, debugging, building internal tools, producing technical documentation, and supporting product development. According to the report, “Lower production costs in these workflows can raise the return to expanding the whole firm, not just the engineering team.” However, the authors of the report clarify that their paper does not show that AI universally creates jobs, though it does counter claims of broad job losses. Instead, they warn of a widening gap: firms that lack resources like capital, technical staff, and management bandwidth may fall behind.

Why it matters

The report challenges the binary view of AI as a job-killer, suggesting that for tech-forward firms, AI acts as a catalyst for expansion rather than simple labor substitution.