Business 4 min read By Alice Ashford
ADP chief: AI is reshaping work, not eliminating jobs at scale
ADP's CEO argues the real AI conversation should focus on preparing for change, citing payroll data showing the workforce is shifting rather than shrinking, with early-career workers in vulnerable roles seeing employment declines.
The chief executive of ADP, one of the world's largest payroll and human capital management firms, has argued that the business conversation about artificial intelligence is too focused on job losses and not enough on how companies should prepare for a fundamental change in the nature of work itself. Writing in a commentary piece, the CEO said AI is not merely altering individual roles but is shifting how people will conceptualise work for the foreseeable future, calling it a defining moment that demands an urgent response from business leaders.
ADP processes payroll for one in six US workers and serves more than 1.1 million businesses globally, paying 42 million workers worldwide. Drawing on that data, the CEO said the labour market is broadly stable and there is no evidence of AI eliminating jobs at scale. Instead, the company's research, conducted with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, shows AI is reshaping work at the task level, a process ADP describes as the great job unbundling. The findings indicate that early-career workers aged 22 to 25 in occupations most vulnerable to AI automation, such as software development and customer service, have experienced employment declines. However, employment among more experienced workers in those same occupations has remained stable or continued to grow, as has employment for workers of all ages in roles less exposed to AI, such as home healthcare aides.
The CEO said AI is also raising the floor on productivity expectations, with employees increasingly expected to use AI tools as a baseline rather than a differentiator. This is changing how performance is measured and managed. A critical split has emerged: entry-level employment has declined where AI is applied to automate work, but employment has grown in occupations where AI is augmentative, supporting and enhancing human decision-making and freeing employees to focus on higher-value, creative and strategic work. The wage premium attached to specific tasks is shifting in real time, with profound implications for workforce planning, skills development and the employer-employee relationship.
ADP's data points to three key shifts that leaders should address now. First, investment drives engagement: 53% of workers say they are fully engaged when they strongly agree their employer is investing in them, compared with just 12% when they do not feel that level of investment. Employees also expect employers to provide the AI upskilling they need to thrive. Second, AI increases the value of human judgment. As checklist work is delegated to AI, workers are moving toward longer-term, strategic projects where human judgment matters most, and the old model of measuring productivity through task completion, speed and efficiency is giving way to measures based on judgment, creativity and long-term impact. Third, AI users report greater productivity and performance: workers who use AI daily are more than twice as likely to be fully engaged at work, 30% versus 14% for non-users, and half as likely to feel overloaded or stressed, 11% versus 23%. Frequent AI users also show higher engagement and motivation, both of which are strong retention drivers.
The CEO concluded that leaders who emerge stronger from this moment are not asking what AI will replace but how to help their people do more with it. AI should be treated as a teammate that takes on routine work, leaving the judgment calls and hard decisions to humans, which makes people more valuable, not less. Businesses should encourage workers to examine which tasks make up their roles and see new possibilities for growth. The organisations that understand the data, that the workforce is shifting rather than shrinking, will be the ones that thrive in the future of work.
