Jeff Bezos predicts AI will create labor shortages amid 97,000 job cuts

Jeff Bezos pushed back against fears that artificial intelligence will eliminate jobs, arguing instead that the technology will create more work than there are people to fill it — a view at odds with mounting layoff data across the tech industry.

Speaking Wednesday at the VivaTech conference in Paris, the Amazon founder and world's fourth-richest person with a net worth of about $250 billion said AI would generate a labor shortage as it lowers barriers to human productivity.

"I know there's a lot of concern that many people have, including many smart people, that AI is going to make humans redundant and so on," Bezos said in conversation with Blue Origin CEO David Limp. "I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think, in fact, AI is going to create a labor shortage."

The prediction comes as US-based employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May, with AI linked to 40% of those layoffs, according to Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Tech layoffs through May have already surpassed 115,000, approaching the total logged in all of 2025, with Meta, Amazon and Snap among those citing AI as a driver of workforce reductions. Goldman Sachs estimates AI is eliminating roughly 16,000 US jobs per month, with entry-level and Gen Z workers absorbing the heaviest impact.

Bezos' optimism echoes historical arguments that industrial revolutions create more jobs than they destroy, but it sidesteps the current reality for many workers. Half of Americans fear AI could put them or someone in their household out of work, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found this month. Even Amazon has trimmed about 30,000 corporate roles since late last year, partly due to AI efficiency gains, and CEO Andy Jassy has said increasing automation through AI tools would result in corporate job losses.

The Bulldozer vs. Shovel Argument

Bezos first made the case in a May interview with CNBC, using a "bulldozer vs. shovel" metaphor to argue AI would uplift workers rather than replace them. He predicted deflation driven by productivity gains and dismissed displacement fears about skilled workers such as radiologists and software engineers, calling it "labor scarcity" rather than unemployment.

Humans have "endless" things they want to do, Bezos said at the conference, and are currently held back only by barriers that AI will lower. Unleash those constraints, he argued, and the demand for human effort will only increase.

The view puts him at odds with some of the most prominent voices in his own industry. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has predicted AI could cause "unusually painful" disruption across white-collar work, though both he and OpenAI's Sam Altman have since walked back their predictions ahead of their companies' blockbuster IPOs. A Federal Reserve governor warned in February that a "jobless boom" leaving workers "essentially unemployable" was "totally possible."

Space Ambitions and AI Infrastructure

Bezos also used the appearance to promote his space venture Blue Origin, which aims to compete with Elon Musk's SpaceX in rockets. He argued that space exploration could eventually move polluting industries off Earth, allowing the planet to be returned to "its pre-Industrial Revolution state." Blue Origin CEO David Limp said reconstruction of the firm's launch pad for New Glenn rockets has begun in Florida following a May explosion that cost the company $150 million.

Bezos' new AI startup Prometheus, which focuses on speeding up physical manufacturing, was valued at $41 billion in a blockbuster fundraising round earlier this month. The company is part of a broader push by Bezos to apply AI to industrial processes, a sector where automation has historically displaced more workers than in knowledge work.

For investors, the debate carries real stakes. If Bezos is right, companies investing in AI infrastructure — from Nvidia's GPUs to data center operators like Equinix — could see sustained demand as AI creates new categories of work rather than simply replacing existing roles. If the pessimists are right, the wave of AI-linked layoffs could accelerate, pressuring consumer spending and widening economic inequality. Nvidia shares, trading at about 35x forward earnings, have already priced in years of AI-driven growth, leaving little room for either scenario to surprise to the upside.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.