“If there’s a large company that might say, ‘Well, we’re not planning to hire as much because of AI,’ or maybe ‘We’re letting people go because of AI,’ I think there’s a little bit of smoke and mirrors there,” Robert Seamans, director of New York University Stern’s Center for the Future of Management, tells Fortune.
“AI is often a scapegoat for things, because it’s easier to blame AI than it is to blame softening consumer demand, or uncertainty because of tariffs, or maybe poor HR strategy the past few years in terms of over hiring coming out of COVID,” he continues, adding that “there’s a lot less political risk than blaming the President’s tariffs.”
While AI isn’t capable of replacing bankers and consultants just yet, there could be trouble on the horizon for marketers and accountants, experts tell Fortune. And elite business degrees are still worth their while; the vast majority of top MBA students are still locking in job offers soon after graduation. But prospects are dwindling, and banking headcounts could stagnate for years as AI drives a massive productivity boom.
Despite Wall Street making headlines for its relentless string of layoffs this year, headcounts across banking and finance have actually been relatively steady.
“I think the general [headcount] trend in the banking industry over the last decade is stable to slightly declining. I don’t see that changing anytime soon,” Pim Hilbers, a managing director working with banking and talent at BCG, tells Fortune. “That doesn’t mean that everybody just stays in their job for life. I think we see a lot more mobility than we saw in the past.”
Banks aren’t ready to shed staffers just yet; experts tell Fortune they’re pulling back on headcount growth for as long as possible, leaning on AI efficiency gains until they’re forced to add more humans to payroll. They predict this sluggish period of hiring could last for years.
“Many of the banks I talked to will say, ‘Look, I want to get the productivity so that I don’t have to hire the next 100 people to put on another billion dollars of loans.’ That’s probably [what] the majority of thinking is: I just won’t have to hire for 24 months, because I can get the productivity,” Mike Abbott, industry group lead for Accenture’s banking and capital markets, tells Fortune.
“As attrition flows through, you don’t have to hire as many, but then eventually you hit a point where you’re going to have to hire again.”
As AI has evolved to take on the grunt work—preparing slideshow presentations, synthesizing client data, and balancing checkbooks—it’s been feared that all junior-level analysts would soon get the boot. But not all jobs in the financial industry rely on the same core skills, and experts tell Fortune there are a few endangered roles in the era of AI disruption.
Surprisingly, the entry-level financial workers paying their dues and tediously crafting bespoke powerpoint presentations won’t be the first ones out the door. Keum tells Fortune that consulting and banking jobs “resist automation quite robustly.” He explains that their job tasks have little margin for error, as clients will not tolerate even the smallest mistake. Plus, every business deal is different; no two acquisitions are exactly alike, making it difficult to automate human critical thinking needed for the job.
“Accountants are not doing well,” Keum told Fortune. “For accounting, it was, ‘Let’s make sure that your numbers are correct based on physical receipts inputted. Now, AI can do that very well…They’re hiring a lot less. So only the extremely senior people survive.”
