The narrative that artificial intelligence (AI) is replacing human workers has dominated headlines over the past year. Yet new research from Yale University’s Budget Lab and the Brookings Institution tells a very different story.
According to their research, they found “no discernible disruption” in employment across all sectors since the launch of ChatGPT 33 months ago, suggesting that the impact of AI on jobs may have been massively overstated. The research also notes that a major technological shift like this will likely take decades rather than a few months or years.
Still, the conversation around AI displacing jobs – especially in the Salesforce ecosystem – has been hard to ignore. This was recently reignited by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who claimed that 4,000 support workers had been laid off or repositioned to make room for AI agents.
But 10K’s 2025 Salesforce Ecosystem Report tells a more balanced story. According to their research, AI isn’t erasing roles, but rather changing how people work within Salesforce.
Automation is handling repetitive tasks, while demand is rising for architects, analysts, and strategists who can design, govern, and deploy these systems responsibly. The result, ultimately, is evolution rather than elimination.
The Holding Pattern: Everyone’s Still Figuring It Out
If there’s one thing in common between the global tech job market and the Salesforce ecosystem, it’s uncertainty around agentic AI. The Yale and Brookings report described what they called a “holding pattern”, where many leaders are still cautiously experimenting with AI, but aren’t yet ready to commit to large structural changes within their enterprise.
This same pattern is actively unfolding across Salesforce teams; companies are piloting Agentforce, as well as other AI features, but many are still deciding where these tools fit into their daily workflows.
Salesforce may have announced thousands of deployments, but widespread transformation will take time – and, according to 10K’s data, is only just beginning to ripple through job structures. The wait-and-see approach helps explain why productivity gains from AI still remain patchy.
Inside the Salesforce Job Market
While much of the tech industry braces for impact, 10K’s report shows that the Salesforce job market is slowly stabilizing, even in the age of AI.
The study shows that global demand for Salesforce talent grew by 8% year-on-year (YoY) after two years of sharp decline, while supply surged by 27%. Much of this hiring is also targeted to evolving company strategies – demand for technical architects (TAs) worldwide rose by 27%, and solution architects (SAs) grew 21%.
Meanwhile, non-technical roles such as administrators (+47%) and business analysts (+33%) both enjoyed a huge supply growth, as new professionals now enter the field. The only role that saw a decline was developers (-12%), signaling how automation and AI-assisted coding are reshaping technical work.
As Nick Hamm, CEO of 10K, best puts it: “These shifts underscore what we at 10K have said for years: the Salesforce ecosystem is maturing, not slowing. Growth is returning, but in a form that demands sharper, more focused strategies from customers, partners, and professionals alike.”
The overall fear that AI is replacing workers overlooks what is actually happening – AI is taking tasks rather than jobs, and the Salesforce ecosystem, at least, is adjusting to it.
Routine admin work like report generation, data cleanup, or user provisioning is now increasingly handled by automation tools or agentic AI. But rather than eliminating the role altogether, we’re seeing a shift in its definition.
Admins are now expected to have more responsibility over data quality, process governance, and user experience, bridging the gap between what is automated and what a human can oversee.
As 10K notes, AI’s rise is amplifying the need for specialists who can design, guide, and govern intelligent systems. The Salesforce Admin of today is becoming a strategist, shaping how automation can actually deliver value.
Why the Layoffs? The AI Excuse Factor
So if the study shows that AI isn’t actually replacing roles, why do layoffs continue across the tech industry? As Salesforce Ben journalist Sasha Semjonova covered in her recent article, Is AI an Excuse? Why Salesforce’s Layoffs Tell a Bigger Picture, the connection is far from clear-cut.
Many companies – including Salesforce – have cited AI as the pivotal reason for workplace reductions, yet most evidence points to cost control and market pressure instead. In Salesforce’s case, a lot of questions remain around whether thousands of customer support roles were actually replaced by Agentforce, or if the restructure was made under a completely different narrative.
Many in the tech industry have suggested that AI has become “the sleek fig leaf of 2025”, which implies that companies are using AI as a convenient cover story that frames cost-cutting and efficiency moves as innovation.
Sasha also spoke to Salesforce industry voice, Matt Pieper, who attributed this argument in relation to Salesforce’s recent job cut announcement, stating: “We saw very transparent words – 9,000 heads to 5,000 heads. That 4,000 went somewhere. People have asked, and nothing has been said. So that leads me to believe it’s not AI. I imagine some of it is – like, maybe out of that 4,000, maybe it was 1,000 or 500, but I’m not sure it is. I think it’s a scapegoat.”
In other words, AI may not be taking jobs, but it’s becoming a powerful story to justify why they’re changing. It offers companies an easy narrative of progress, innovation, and efficiency, but behind that story often lies a more traditional business motive of cutting costs, refocusing priorities, and appeasing investors.
Final Thoughts
With all the information about job displacement going around right now, it’s clear that grounded research shows that we are not at large-scale risk of AI replacing roles – not just yet, anyway.
The 10K report shows that the safest bets lie in roles requiring human judgment and systems thinking. Architects, analysts, and consultants remain in high demand because their work is too strategic to automate.
At the same time, AI fluency is fast becoming a specialized skill and an expectation for employers. Understanding prompts, automation flows, and data governance could potentially be as essential as knowing Salesforce basics.
Across the ecosystem, new hybrid roles are emerging, like admins who double as analysts, developers who act as AI operators, and architects evolving into data strategists. As 10K notes, “the winners in this next chapter will invest in scarce architectural talent and embrace AI transformation.” The key is adaptability, which requires learning how to guide and not just use AI.
The Yale and Brookings study shows that AI hasn’t destroyed jobs, and Salesforce’s own data reinforces that reality. It’s not a job killer, but potentially a job multiplier that will elevate some roles, compress others, and open new career paths entirely.
