What changed
Forbes reported in August on new research from Visier, a company that studies workforce records for large employers. The data show hiring rates fell about 24 percent from 2022 to 2026, which means fewer openings for every job seeker.
The sharper finding sits below the industry level. A bank and a hospital sit in different industries, but both employ finance, HR and data people, so Visier tracked jobs instead of industries. Inside the same data teams, the share of AI engineers hired since 2022 rose 251 percent, versus a 32 percent drop for data scientists, which means the job title beats the industry label.
Hiring rates across 155 large companies, 2022 to 2026. The front door narrowed for every job seeker.
Why it matters
Some work is holding its value. Educators, lawyers, architects and security professionals remain hard to replace, because their jobs carry judgment, accountability and trust that a machine cannot own. The safer career is not the job AI cannot touch. It is the job where AI does pieces of the work but cannot own the outcome.
Experience is repricing too. Derler says organizations are shifting where they need skills as AI becomes embedded in day-to-day work. Workers aged 35 to 50 hold a larger share of new hires than in 2022, because experience keeps value when AI supplies the facts. If the trend holds, mid-career workers could become the largest group of new hires.
What to watch
Taken together, the pattern suggests a quiet reorganization instead of mass replacement. The study does not blame AI alone for the hiring drop. The same years carried economic uncertainty and restructuring.
Whether the mid-career shift outlasts the current market is not yet known. Until it settles, the useful question is which parts of your job AI can do, not whether it can take the whole thing. Watch for Visier's full report to confirm the exact figures behind the Forbes account.
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