The AI layoff story has a second chapter that rarely makes the press release. The Associated Press reported this week that companies which cut jobs citing artificial intelligence — Microsoft, Barclays and Kroger among the latest — are occasionally rehiring the same workers after the technology underperformed. Hiring circles call it the “AI boomerang.”
🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE
AI-attributed layoffs are proving partly reversible, per AP’s look at the “AI boomerang” — and that changes how workers should read the next layoff email. If the tools underperform, the role can come back, sometimes at a higher price. The smart move: negotiate harder the second time around.
Announce the Cuts, Skip the Rehiring
AP’s report, updated October 29, is blunt about the asymmetry: companies announce layoffs loudly, then “don’t always broadcast their U-turns.” Lucy Beaumont, a senior vice-president at assessment firm SHL, told AP: “Two years ago, we said, ‘Would this happen?’ and now we’re saying, ‘Yes, it is happening in real time.’”
The examples AP gathered:
- Klarna began recruiting human customer service representatives again after CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski acknowledged in a Bloomberg interview that relying on an AI chatbot to cut costs had gone too far.
- Ford said in June it had hired or promoted 350 veteran engineers after AI quality-control tools failed to perform at the expected level.
- Robert Half managers in finance, marketing, legal and healthcare reported rehiring people for roles scrapped during AI-linked cutbacks, because the work required human oversight, relationship management or quality control.
“When you need critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, institutional knowledge, those are things that AI just can’t replicate,” Bill Driscoll, a senior district president at Robert Half, told AP.
The Pattern Behind the U-Turns
The reversals are not random mercy. Betsy Summers of Forrester’s Future of Work team told AP that companies swapping people for AI miss the invisible work: sensing moods, impromptu meetings, the team-building “citizenship behaviours” no workflow diagram captures. Georgetown professor Brooks Holtom’s example is customer service, where an agent must read emotion and judge severity. “It’s that combination of creativity but staying in the guardrail that’s really hard for a machine to figure out,” he told AP.
Robert Half’s survey of more than 2,000 US hiring managers found 32 percent of those who eliminated a role primarily because of AI later rehired for the same or a similar position, and Forrester forecast that half of AI-attributed layoffs will be quietly reversed.
The pattern rhymes with October’s rehiring-correction data and with Amazon’s own history: after cutting roughly 30,000 corporate roles, it ran a boomerang push to rehire former staff for AI and cloud roles, including some it had let go. The context this week is a labour market still issuing mixed signals. Amazon cut about 250 more jobs in its devices and services unit on October 28, as reported by Reuters, saying the cuts would help it “operate more efficiently and better align with our product roadmap” — the same week its devices division shipped new Alexa products. On October 29, AP separately catalogued how companies from Cisco to Block are citing AI in cuts that mostly point to broader restructuring. The cuts are real; so, increasingly, is the churn behind them.
If You’re Asked Back: What the Experts Say
For a dismissed worker, a boomerang offer is leverage:
- Know your human edge. Holtom’s framing: “Really try to be able to articulate, what’s your value proposition as a human?” Emotional intelligence, ethical judgment and institutional knowledge are what the rehiring is for.
- Ask about growth, not just salary. Beaumont says workers considering a return are asking for more money plus clarity on promotion paths. Trust is damaged after an AI cut — price that in.
- Get terms in writing. Holtom suggests a one-year renewable contract with a buyout clause if the role is cut again, and volunteering for audit-style duties — reviewing a chatbot’s customer conversations — that create “a higher role for yourself.”
- Don’t assume the company learned. Beaumont notes some employers are returning “with their tail between their legs”; others are just relabelling the same strategy. It is fair to ask what changed.
What It Means for New Zealand
NZ workplaces see the same dynamic scaled down: recruiters told us one job ad drawing 1,000 applications flipped attention back to being human — the local version of the invisible-work problem AP describes. As our read of NZ’s filled-jobs data found, growth is uneven rather than vanished. The AP advice translates directly: if an employer cuts citing AI, keep the door open — the second conversation often prices better than the first.
❓ FAQ
What is the “AI boomerang”?
A hiring-world nickname described by AP: companies that cut jobs citing AI later rehire for the eliminated roles after the tools underperform, often quietly.
Which companies have reversed AI cuts?
Per AP: Klarna re-recruited human customer service agents, and Ford hired or promoted 350 veteran engineers in June after AI quality-control tools fell short.
How common are AI-layoff reversals?
Hard to measure — AP says exactly that. Available signals: Robert Half counts 32 percent of AI-motivated cuts later rehired, and SHL’s Lucy Beaumont says the reversals now have “trend status.”
Should you go back to a company that laid you off for AI?
Treat it as leverage, say the experts AP surveyed: negotiate salary, ask how AI affects promotion paths, get a one-year contract in writing, and position for the audit-and-oversight duties the automation created.
🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE
Not every AI layoff sticks. The tools meant to replace people are, in a meaningful number of cases, failing quietly and sending the jobs back — Klarna and Ford are the marquee examples. The practical question shifts from “will AI take my job?” to “what is my price the second time they need me?” That is a negotiation, not an execution.
📰 Sources
- AP News — The AI-linked layoffs that didn’t stick
- Reuters via AOL — Amazon cuts about 250 jobs in devices unit
- AP News — How AI is fueling tech world layoffs and job cuts
- Robert Half — NZ insights
— CJ Murden, editor of Singularity.Kiwi. Former digital technologies teacher, author of AI-focused books. Writing with a New Zealand focus.
