New York's groundbreaking attempt to track AI-driven job losses has hit a wall of corporate silence. Nearly a year after Governor Kathy Hochul ordered companies to disclose whether automation caused layoffs, not a single employer out of 162 has checked the box—even as Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley cut thousands of jobs while publicly touting AI's productivity gains. The zero-disclosure rate is raising questions about whether companies are dodging transparency requirements or if AI's impact on employment remains overstated.
New York thought it had a simple solution to one of the economy's most pressing questions: Are companies actually replacing humans with AI? Governor Kathy Hochul ordered the state's Department of Labor to add a checkbox to mandatory layoff notices last March, making New York the first state to directly ask employers whether "technological innovation or automation" drove workforce cuts. Eleven months later, the answer is a deafening silence—zero companies have admitted to AI-driven layoffs despite cutting nearly 28,300 jobs.
The numbers don't add up. Amazon reported 660 affected workers in New York filings while CEO Andy Jassy publicly warned that AI benefits would lead to job cuts affecting roughly 30,000 employees companywide. Goldman Sachs topped New York's layoff charts with over 4,100 workers affected and internally linked reductions to AI productivity gains, according to Reuters. Morgan Stanley cut 260 New York positions, with an unnamed source telling Bloomberg that a portion reflected automation. Yet on required Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings, all three marked other reasons or declined to specify technology's role.
"AI is not the reason behind the vast majority of cuts," Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel insists, pointing instead to "reducing layers" and cutting pandemic-era hiring excesses. Kristin Devoe, a spokesperson for Governor Hochul, confirms the Department of Labor follows up with every employer to verify filing accuracy. In Amazon's case, the company explained workers hired during e-commerce surges were simply no longer needed—a classic "economic" justification that sidesteps the automation question entirely.
