Jobless Growth: How AI Is Fueling Output Without New Jobs

A Record Productivity Boom With No Hiring to Match?

We’re in a strange economic moment. Output is up, markets are holding, and the macro picture looks stable. But behind the scenes, hiring has hit a wall. As Business Insider reports, we may be headed for a period of very modest job growth alongside robust GDP growth.

The BLS shows the same imbalance. In the second quarter of 2025, nonfarm business productivity rose 3.3% while total hours worked increased just 1.1%. Year over year, productivity is up 1.5%—clear evidence that output is rising faster than payrolls. The national data confirms what Aura’s forward-looking signals are already capturing: hiring pipelines are tightening even as performance metrics improve.

Aura’s October Jobs Report provides a sharper view of what’s coming next in the labor market. Global job postings dropped 10% in September, with the U.S. down 13.8% and even steeper declines across Latin America. Technology and software roles saw the biggest pullback, dropping 32% and 19% respectively. Even healthcare, usually resilient, has started to soften.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs has put a name to what we’re seeing: jobless growth. The economy is expanding, but it appears that this growth is being powered by infrastructure investment,  automation, and efficiency, not by human hiring.

See Aura’s real-time workforce dashboards to track hiring shifts by sector and region. Request a demo of Aura Intelligence today.

The Quiet Shift Behind Jobless Growth

Think of it as a two-speed economy: AI-driven productivity is accelerating while hiring demand slows, even in sectors that typically resist downturns.

Aura’s data, alongside recent Wall Street commentary, shows organizations doing more with smaller teams. The focus has shifted from headcount growth to process compression and outright hiring freezes.

That divergence is now visible in executive sentiment. As Aura Intelligence's CEO, Evan Sohn, put it on CNBC: “Many firms still intend to hire, but they’ve hit pause. There’s a widening gap between hiring plans and hiring execution.”

That pause isn’t just about cost control, but likely a strategic hedge to counteract insecurity. With interest rate uncertainty, global trade shifts, and delayed federal labor data, companies may be waiting to see where the economy settles, but doing so for too long risks being caught short-staffed when conditions turn.

How AI Is Reshaping Labor Demand

Goldman describes the current landscape as a “low-hire, low-fire” economy, and Aura’s real-time signals back that up. Productivity continues climbing, but the shape of work is evolving. AI tools are replacing some tasks, redesigning others, but ultimately appear to be creating fewer net-new roles than past tech cycles.

Entry-level workers are feeling this the most. Many foundational roles in analytics, marketing ops, and IT, once seen as career launchpads, are being partially absorbed by AI. Hiring in those segments has gone negative. Software jobs, including AI jobs, as seen in the chart below, have also turned negative. Many are fearful that we are entering a new phase of innovation without the employment multiplier.

Yet the slowdown isn’t uniform. Policy choices and public investment are shaping very different outcomes across regions.

Where Jobless Growth Diverges by Region

Europe is bucking the trend. Job postings rose 2.8% in September, led by France (up 6.7%) and the U.K. (up 5.3%). Public investment and digital transformation programs may be helping maintain demand.

Remote work also continues to evolve. While total volume dipped slightly, remote listings now account for over 7.8% of all postings, a sign that distributed teams are becoming a structural strategy, not just a post-pandemic holdover. Greater remote work openings, while typically desired by many employees, may also indicate a lower tolerance for employee investment, which normally leads to increased in-office work, training, promotion, and upskilling.

Strategic Risks for Executives in a Jobless Growth Cycle

Executives need to read this carefully: rising GDP with slowing hiring is not typical stability. It’s a decoupling of productivity and employment, in a way that may have never happened before.

There are three strategic risks at play:

• Workforce planning: Traditional models won’t track cleanly with AI-powered efficiency gains. You need new planning assumptions.

• Talent visibility: Without live data and skill/talent inventories, companies risk underestimating attrition or missing critical gaps.

• Strategic timing: Firms that over-optimize for productivity today may find themselves under-resourced when the next growth wave hits.

Why Workforce Intelligence Is the CEO’s Edge

The Aura October report is a reminder: labor data isn’t just for HR anymore. It’s a real-time signal for strategic planning and resource management. In an environment where public reports are delayed and economic signals are murky, alternative data platforms like Aura’s are filling the gap.

Understanding where competitors are hiring, where growth is slowing, which markets are resilient, and how AI is reshaping job structures is true competitive intelligence. The difference between reacting and leading now hinges on how quickly leaders can leverage workforce data to inform capital and operational decisions.

The most successful companies are guided by a precise strategy. They’re redeploying talent, refining processes, and leveraging AI insights and data to inform every decision. The leaders who can see those shifts in real time and act on them will be the ones who win the next cycle.

To stay ahead of the realignment, companies need live workforce intelligence, not lagging indicators. Aura helps leaders see hiring shifts before they appear in public data.