This growing trend – which the firm calls “AI rebounding” – suggests several companies are learning the hard way that AI cannot do everything human employees can, according to new research from talent assessment firm SHL. Nearly one in five US workers say they have experienced a surprising workplace reversal: their employer replaced them with artificial intelligence (AI), only to ask them to come back later, a report has found. And bringing those workers back is proving expensive.
As per the data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, employers cited AI in 121,401 announced job cuts through October. That is already more than double the 54,836 AI-related layoffs announced during all of 2025. A study from the Stanford Digital Economy Lab found that employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in jobs heavily exposed to AI was 19% lower than it would have been if it had grown at the same pace as less-exposed fields.
According to SHL: AI rebounding is what happens when a company automates a role before it has genuinely assessed the human capability inside it. The AI doesn’t deliver, the gap becomes obvious, and the business ends up rehiring the same experts they just let go of, at a far greater cost,” said Lucy Beaumont, global senior vice president of product and design at SHL, in a press release. The report also said younger workers are taking the brunt of the shift.
Similarly, automaker Ford made a move in June, hiring and promoting 350 experienced engineers after AI-powered quality control tools fell short of expectations.
a company representative told Fortune that “these engineers carry the hard-earned wisdom of decades of design,” adding that pairing AI with deep technical expertise is what actually gets results While Ford noted that AI has helped improve quality.