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A new framework to track AI jobs losses… last call for Luke Lango’s #1 AI Megadeal… Wall Street’s voice-phishing nightmare… the identity-security stock riding it higher
This morning brought the latest Challenger, Gray & Christmas jobs report and, overall, the numbers look encouraging.
If you’re less familiar, Challenger, Gray & Christmas is an outplacement and executive coaching firm that tracks and analyzes corporate layoffs across the United States. Its monthly Challenger Employment Report serves as an early, reliable indicator of labor market trends.
This morning, the report showed that employers announced just 33,429 job cuts in July – down 27% from June and down 46% from a year ago. It was the lowest monthly total in two years. Meanwhile, hiring plans jumped 47% from June, the strongest July for hiring since 2022.
But look past the headline, and AI’s fingerprint on job losses keeps growing…
AI was the No. 1 cited reason for job cuts for the fifth consecutive month (March through July), responsible for 10,970 cuts in July alone – 33% of the month’s total.
So far this year, AI has been blamed for 112,713 job cuts. That’s almost a quarter of all U.S. layoffs, up about 23% from a month ago. And it’s already more than double the 54,836 AI-related cuts recorded in all of 2025.
So, how do we interpret this?
Well, it’s not an AI “jobpocalypse” with bots directly kicking humans out of the workforce. But neither is it business as usual…
Tech giants and financial institutions are freezing traditional hiring and quietly cutting departments to fund massive AI infrastructure spending.
Regular Digest readers know that my thinking on this is evolving. Two years ago, I expected AI-driven layoffs to show up loudly, visibly, and consistently. There have been some loud, visible announcements – but not consistently. Of course, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
The trouble is every new jobs report or corporate announcement – viewed narrowly – leaves us unclear whether we’re looking at “noise” or the early stages of something bigger. So instead of reacting to every new headline, I built a framework to help us.
It puts each new data point in context: a map of the stages an AI-driven jobpocalypse would likely move through, so we can better identify where we are in this process.
The 7 stages of an AI jobpocalypse
It’s less of a prediction and more like a diagnostic.
So, here’s the map, running from mildest to most severe:
- Workers use AI to get more done – individual output rises, but headcount stays the same
- Revenue starts growing faster than headcount – growth no longer requires proportional hiring
- Entry-level hiring quietly dries up – companies stop backfilling junior roles AI can now cover
- AI moves from occasional tool to core infrastructure – workflows are built around it, not just assisted by it
- Departments get redesigned around smaller, leaner teams – org charts shrink around AI-augmented workers
- Middle-management and routine professional roles vanish through attrition and layoffs – people leave and/or are let go, and the positions disappear
- Growth stops requiring headcount at all – AI increasingly fills the jobs that new demand would once have created, and mass jobs displacement arrives
Stage 7 is the one everyone fears. It’s not guaranteed – even where AI could technically do the work that new growth creates, companies still have to choose to automate it rather than keep people. Customer trust, regulatory pressure, and plain political risk could be a deterrent against squeezing out every last efficiency gain. But we’ll see.
One note – these stages won’t play out in perfect order; some will overlap. But from 30,000 feet, this is likely the shape an AI-driven jobpocalypse would take.
Where are we today?
We’re seeing data from stages 1 through 3 show up, with hints of stage 4.
For example, the 2026 Fortune 500 rankings – based on companies’ most recent fiscal-year results (mostly fiscal 2025) – show revenue hit a record $21 trillion and profits a record $2.1 trillion, both up from the prior year’s list. Yet collective headcount fell for the second year in a row, a loss of more than 301,000 jobs.
Revenue and profit climbing while headcount shrinks are stages 1 and 2, playing out in plain sight across America’s largest companies. (Some of that reflects a longer efficiency trend that predates AI – but the size and direction of the gap fit the pattern.)
For stage 3, Stanford researchers tracking 25 million workers found employment among 22-to-25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed occupations down 13% since 2022 – and for young software developers specifically, down nearly 20% since 2024, even as hiring for more experienced developers in the same firms keeps growing.
Again, these aren’t firings; rather, they’re a closing of the door to the next generation of workers.
To be fair, a May New York Fed study found no clear divergence between junior and senior job postings in AI-exposed occupations – and noted the broader decline in those postings predates ChatGPT’s release.
As to stage 4, there are early signs of this, too. Last year, Shopify (SHOP) CEO Tobi Lütke told his staff that “reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation” – teams must justify headcount by proving AI can’t already do the work.
A year later, Shopify’s headcount has fallen from roughly 8,100 to roughly 7,600 while revenue has grown about 30% to $11.6 billion, pushing revenue per employee to around $1.5 million.
Now, tomorrow brings the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ official nonfarm payrolls report. It won’t show any dramatic AI-driven collapse – but it’s not built to catch one.
A single monthly headline measures the whole economy at once; our 7-stage framework measures something narrower and, frankly, more useful – where AI is quietly reshaping hiring and headcount before any of it shows up as a scary topline number. We want to measure the churn beneath the smooth surface.
So, over the coming quarters, watch headline numbers less and listen for explanations more. When the “why” behind corporate hiring and firing starts to sound like stage 3 or 4 with increasing volume, that’s your tip-off that stages 5 and 6 won’t be far behind.
We’ll keep tracking it.
Last call for Luke Lango’s 2026 AI Megadeal Event
Most investors assume the best way to profit from AI is by buying the companies everyone already knows – Nvidia (NVDA), OpenAI, Anthropic, or the next high-profile AI stock.
Our technology expert Luke Lango sees it differently.
At last Thursday’s , he explained how AI is creating an entirely new layer of wealth creation that exists largely outside the public stock market. As Big Tech races to acquire breakthrough technologies, enormous value is being created long before most investors ever have the chance to buy a single share.
During last week’s event, Luke laid out how today’s AI wealth is increasingly being created through acquisitions of small, private companies – the breakthrough technologies larger firms are eager to own. More importantly, he detailed how ordinary investors can position themselves for it.
As part of the presentation, Luke gave away the name of a robotics startup whose clients include Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), Salesforce (CRM), and the Mayo Clinic.
Here’s Luke:
Its one-of-a-kind ‘robot school’ platform is rolling out now, and I believe this represents the “ChatGPT moment” for artificially intelligent robots.
I project this startup’s revenue could grow from approximately $18 million by the end of this year to as much as $360 billion by 2029.
But this is just one opportunity. AI is creating many more – and Luke has built a framework specifically to spot them before the rest of the market catches on.
– but not for long. We’re taking it offline tonight at midnight.
So, if you’ve been meaning to watch it, .
On Wednesday, Point72 Asset Management told investors it had been attacked
It wasn’t the only investing firm attacked. Two Sigma Investments, Citadel, and several private equity firms were also targeted.
It was part of a series of sophisticated attacks on Wall Street firms in recent days that targeted information systems.
Here’s Bloomberg:
The attack featured voice phishing, or vishing, in which cyber criminals use technology to mimic voices in phone calls or messages to trick employees into revealing sensitive information or granting access.
This isn’t surprising. We’ve been tracking the growth of cyberhacks here in the Digest for years.
Most recently, back in May, editor Brian Hunt wrote about the problem:
Today, a fraudster can generate a realistic fake ID in seconds and clone someone’s voice from three seconds of audio. The fraudster can also use AI to create a deepfake video that blinks, turns, and smiles on command.
These nefarious products can allow them to bypass security checks that banks and financial institutions rely on to verify identity…
Scores of statistics reveal how big a problem this is becoming.
As just one example, Peris.ai reports that deepfake voice attacks drained $1.1 billion from U.S. corporate accounts last year, tripling 2024’s figure of $360 million.
And it’s not just corporations – individuals need to be on alert too. According to SQ Magazine, U.S. consumers receive 9.9 unwanted calls per week on average, or more than 500 per year. Overall, multi-channel phishing campaigns combining voice, SMS, and email jumped 97% last year.
But perhaps the most frightening statistic of all of this comes from Programs.com:
Even when warned of the dangers of voice phishing, 33% of people still disclose sensitive information during an attack.
Think about that: one out of three will know the attack is coming – and still fall for it.
All this points toward one thing…
Cybersecurity is a must-have – which makes it a must-have in your portfolio.
How to invest today
If you want the one-click-and-you’re-done option, check out the Amplify Cybersecurity ETF (HACK). It holds cybersecurity heavyweights including Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Cisco (CSCO), and Cloudflare (NET).
But if you’re looking for concentrated exposure, Brian has an idea – Mitek Systems (MITK), a stock he profiled months ago.
From his Money & Megatrends issue back in May:
Mitek is a $640 million company with a 25-year head start on this challenge.
Its legacy business – processing over one billion mobile deposits annually – has made it the trusted identity backbone for many North American financial institutions.
Major customers include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, PayPal, and Capital One…
Its Verified Identity Platform brings together identity document authentication, biometric liveness detection, deepfake and voice-clone scoring, and real-time fraud analytics.
As I write, it’s up nearly 16% since Brian flagged it in Money & Megatrends, quadrupling the S&P over the same period.
Based on how rapidly cyberattacks are increasing, these gains are likely just the beginning.
We’re running long, so I won’t go deeper into Brian’s analysis, but I encourage you to. .
And for more from Brian, . Every day the market is open, he delivers actionable insights, loaded with specific stock tickers. Best of all, it’s 100% free.
In addition, Brian has published a free special report on stocks that could be the biggest beneficiaries of AI job displacement. You can find that on his .
We’ll keep you updated on all these stories here in the Digest.
Have a good evening,
Jeff Remsburg
(Disclosure: I own HACK and MSFT)
