The big question in corporate America today is to what extent AI will upend the entry-level white-collar workforce. Some have warned of a full obliteration of the entry-level workforce; others say those fears are overblown. And if the likes of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are right, we can see half of all those positions eliminated within a few years.
However, there’s a growing number of business leaders and AI experts who say the AI jobpocalypse is nothing but a fantasy, and none other than Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff sits in that camp. While AI challenges the economics of software-as-a-service (SaaS) firms like Salesforce—whose stock price is down over 31% from a year ago as of Monday morning—in a recent post on X, the billionaire said his company is hiring 1,000 new grads and interns to build its AI systems.
“We’re hiring 1,000 new grads & interns right now to ride the AI exponential,” the post read. “You are right they said AI would kill entry-level jobs. Meanwhile these grads and interns are building it—powering Agentforce & Headless360 at Salesforce,” he said of the company’s agentic AI platforms.
The post was a reaction to Trump administration AI and crypto czar David Sacks’ post noting a “narrative violation” about the impact of AI on hiring. Sacks cited statistics published in a recent Wall Street Journal story highlighting bright spots in entry-level hiring, including that unemployment among 20- to 24-year-olds, while still near 5.6%, is actually down from a high of 9.2% last September, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Benioff said in his X post he’s “locked on” to that hiring trend.
Nonetheless, AI’s predicted impact on the labor market is beginning to materialize. In February, Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 40% of its workforce owing to AI efficiency, and Dorsey said other CEOs would follow suit. Other Big Tech firms have cut workers, including Oracle and Meta, which cut headcounts to offset high AI investment costs as both ramp up AI spending, rather than because of AI-enabled efficiency.
All the hype would have you thinking the layoffs would lead to mass unemployment. However, the job cuts have yet to show up in the macro data. Last month, employers added a better-than-expected 178,000 jobs, and unemployment dipped to 4.3%, signs that hiring remains solid despite AI concerns, though gains were largely driven by health care.
A Salesforce spokesperson told Fortune the company had nothing to add beyond Benioff’s X post.
Why some firms are increasing hiring even as AI automates tasks
As some tech firms slash roles because of AI-enabled efficiencies or to free up cash flow, others have increased hiring. IBM in February announced it was tripling hiring for entry-level jobs, including in software development and other fields impacted by AI, betting the hires would bring long-term growth amid the limitations of AI adoption.
“The companies three to five years from now that are going to be the most successful are those companies that doubled down on entry-level hiring in this environment,” Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM’s chief human resources officer, said in an interview.
A recent report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that employers plan to increase hiring by 5.6% for the class of 2026. Many of the industries planning to boost hiring are actually those assumed most vulnerable to AI automation, including information services, engineering, and professional services. A recent Anthropic study found AI is already theoretically capable of automating the majority of tasks associated with roles in those industries. But just 11.4% of employers said they planned on decreasing hiring, according to the NACE study. Out of those, just under 16% cited AI as to why they were decreasing hiring.
This hiring push marks a reversal from the job cuts Salesforce made in February. Business Insider reported the SaaS giant trimmed fewer than 1,000 roles, citing people familiar with the matter and LinkedIn posts from several of those impacted. Affected roles included marketing, project management, data analytics, and positions related to Agentforce, one of the AI products for which Benioff said in his X post the company would be hiring. And last August, Benioff said during an interview Salesforce had reduced its customer support workforce from 9,000 to 5,000.
As the company seeks to increase hiring of new grads and interns, other business leaders, like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, maintain that AI won’t exactly replace workers. Instead, big fleets of AI agents will work alongside employees, boosting productivity without cutting headcount.
“In 10 years, we will hopefully have 75,000 employees, as small as possible, as big as necessary. They’re going to be super busy,” Huang said. “Those 75,000 employees will be working with 7.5 million agents.”
Benioff said in a recent interview with TBPN that while he wouldn’t hire more software developers or service agents in fiscal year 2026 because of the power of the company’s AI agents, he said he increased hiring for salespeople because the company has more demand.
“I need more capacity because we have more demand than ever,” he said.
