Goldman Sachs just confirmed AI is already killing jobs. Call centers are 39% below trend. Entry-level workers are next.

Goldman Sachs analyzed 800 occupations across 11 developed economies.

Their conclusion: AI is not a future threat. It's a present restructuring.

Call centers in the US are now 39% below historical employment trend. Canada is 33% below. Germany is 27% below. Software publishing, management consulting, and advertising are all falling sharply below trend across every major developed market.

This isn't speculation. This is payroll data.

For entry-level workers, the damage is accelerating. A 10% increase in occupational AI exposure correlates with a 0.6 percentage point drag on annual headcount growth in Australia. In the US, it's 0.2 points. Sounds small. Multiply it across an entire generation of workers trying to enter the workforce.

Goldman's report, published yesterday, found that AI adoption in developed economies now sits at 15-20%. France, the US, the Netherlands, and the UK lead. Italy and Japan lag.

The companies making the cuts already know this. Oracle cut 21,000 people and cited AI. Cisco redirected labor savings into silicon. Intuit slashed 17% and pointed to AI infrastructure.

Goldman just gave them the data to justify the next round.

If your workforce plan assumes AI displacement is a 2028 problem, you are already behind. Audit your entry-level hiring pipeline today. The companies that cut first and rehired at 30% higher salaries already learned this lesson the expensive way.

SOURCE: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/19/goldman-ai-impact-employment-jobs.html
VERIFIED: CNBC (Aug 19, 2026), PYMNTS (Aug 19, 2026), Goldman Sachs Research "Global Economics Comment: Is AI Impacting Global Labor Markets?"
SIGNAL: Goldman Sachs is the first major institution to quantify AI labor impact across multiple developed economies with hard employment data. The call center numbers alone should trigger workforce planning reviews at every enterprise running customer service operations.