In 2026, “AI” has become the corporate world’s favourite exit line. A layoff tracker compiled by SkillSyncer recorded 247 layoff events this year alone, affecting nearly 184,000 workers. That’s over 1,100 jobs gone every single day. The biggest single blow? Oracle, which cut 30,000 people in one stroke.
And in almost every press release, the stated culprit is AI.
But here’s the number that stopped me in my tracks. According to data compiled by Built In, only 9% of companies said AI had fully replaced certain roles. Meanwhile, nearly 60% of US hiring managers said they plan layoffs with AI or automation as the most-cited reason, yet fewer than one in ten has actually replaced a job with a machine.
Read that again. Sixty percent are blaming AI. Nine percent have actually done it.
Here in Singapore, we’ve watched Meta carry out its third wave of cuts in 2026 alone, the largest single corporate restructuring in Asia’s tech sector this year. Amazon quietly shuttered its Singapore fulfilment operations. Tiger Beer, Yeo’s, JLL… the retrenchment list is long, and “AI” is a common thread in the corporate language. But look closely, and you’ll find the real drivers are rising energy costs, weakening demand, and a global push to cut headcount in the name of “efficiency.”
AI is the merely the excuse – the real reason is cost-cutting.
1. “AI Did It” Is Often a Cover Story
When a company says AI eliminated your role, it sounds final. Almost noble, like you lost to the inevitable march of progress.
But that framing does something very specific: it removes the company from moral responsibility and leaves you feeling powerless. Like you lost to a robot, not a quarterly earnings call.
I’ve spoken to dozens of professionals retrenched this year, men and women in their 40s and 50s, sitting across from me, still processing what happened. A 49-year-old Operations Director I worked with last month was told his role was “being automated.” When we dug into what actually happened? His business unit had missed targets for three straight quarters. A merger had created redundant headcount. The decision was made before anyone touched a keyboard. AI was the press release. The P&L was the decision.
I’m not saying AI isn’t real or isn’t changing work. It absolutely is. But knowing the difference between “AI genuinely displaced this function” and “AI is the PR reason for a cost cut” matters enormously for how you respond, how you position yourself, and how you write your next chapter.
2. The Real Risk Is Staying Still While Others Move
Here’s what the data actually tells us.
Singapore now reports the highest global concentration of AI skills in job postings, about 3.2% of all roles, more than any other country. AI-related roles command roughly 30% higher wages than comparable white-collar positions. And 74% of APAC firms are already running AI programmes.
The threat to your career is not a machine that woke up and decided to replace you. The threat is remaining among the 26% of APAC workers who haven’t developed any working AI fluency, and being the easiest headcount to cut when the next “transformation” memo lands.
A 52-year-old Finance Manager I spoke with recently had survived four rounds of retrenchment at his company. His colleagues kept asking how. His answer was simple: he’d spent the past 18 months embedding himself in every AI pilot the company ran. He wasn’t the most technically gifted in the room. He was just the person the business couldn’t afford to lose.
That’s Career Capital in action… Not seniority, tenure or politics.
3. What Smart Professionals Are Doing Right Now
They are not panicking about AI…instead, they are making themselves genuinely harder to cut.
Stop treating AI fluency as optional. Even basic competence, using AI tools to accelerate your output, writing better prompts, knowing which tasks AI handles well, signals to any hiring manager that you’re an asset during a “transformation,” not a liability. You don’t need to be an AI engineer. You need to be the person who makes the AI engineer more effective.
Understand your own replaceability, honestly. Which parts of your role are high-judgment and relationship-intensive? Which are process and information-handling? The second category is where you need to either move up or move out, before the next restructuring announcement does it for you.
And keep your network warm. In the Singapore market right now, with Amazon and Meta both cutting and hiring caution spreading, the next role will almost never come from a cold application. It will come from someone who remembered you. Someone who knew what you were capable of, before you needed them to know.
The professionals who understand this early, who treat their Career Currencies as assets to actively manage rather than features on a CV, will have far more options when the email arrives.
Because at some point, for many of us… it will.
Stay agile, my friends. And stay a little sceptical of the narrative.
#CareerAgility #FutureOfWork #ExecutiveCareers #Singapore #AIAndWork