AI ≠ Pink Slips: Why Automation Will Hire, Not Fire
Patrick Targun :: Jun 6, 2025
Let’s address the elephant: “AI is coming for your job.” Doom-scroll headlines predict a *white-collar wipe-out*, but they ignore how businesses and workers actually behave when a productivity breakthrough lands.
1. ROI, not redundancy, drives real decisions
If one engineer armed with AI ships 15× more code, the return on that salary explodes—so companies hire faster and launch projects that once felt impossible. Think tractors, not terminators: farms didn’t lay off workers and stop; they planted more acreage and created brand-new industries.
2. Productivity booms create new categories of work
- AI-native roles: prompt engineers, model auditors, synthetic-data designers
- Problem-finding roles: spotting bottlenecks and inventing products once time-boxed by grunt work
3. Deflation is a feature, not a bug
Automation drops costs—cheaper goods raise real wages. If expenses fall 30 %, you can work fewer hours without sacrificing lifestyle. That freedom fuels fresh businesses (and more hiring).
4. Yes, some tasks disappear—but whole jobs rarely do
Long-haul driving may fade, yet dispatching, customer service, and maintenance expand when freight gets cheaper. Automating 40 % of a role ups the ceiling on one person’s impact.
5. Entry-level paths will look different—so will mentorship
AI handles today’s grunt work. Tomorrow’s junior hire arrives fluent in AI tooling and tackles higher-order problems, guided by mentors focused on judgment, not keystrokes.
6. What it means for mid-market manufacturers (our sweet spot)
- Change-over labour ↓ 25 %, shifts per week ↑
- Quality inspectors move from clipboards to root-cause analysis
- Skunk-works product lines launch with teams half their historical size
Each project creates roles—data stewards, continuous-improvement leads, citizen developers—not pink slips.
7. The real risk isn’t job loss; it’s missing the upside
Firms clinging to bolt-on modules will watch AI-native rivals scoop up talent, customers, and margins.
8. How to future-proof your people now
- Upskill, don’t downsize. Give staff freedom to master copilot tools.
- Pair senior judgment with junior AI fluency. Mixed teams out-execute homogenous “experts.”
- Automate outputs, not outcomes. Systems draft reports; humans act on them.
- Measure value per head, not heads per task. Higher revenue per employee is a win for everyone.
Final thought
The steam engine ended stablehand jobs—then birthed railroads, tourism, and urban design. AI will be no different. Companies, careers, and communities that treat these tools as force-multipliers, not pink-slip machines, will capture the next decade’s growth.
Ready to turn AI into your next hiring plan? Let’s map a human-centric ERP roadmap that grows productivity and head-count where it matters.