While tech layoff trackers dominate the AI-jobs conversation, the largest annual survey of how CEOs actually plan their workforces points the other way. KPMG’s 12th Global CEO Outlook, published with the full survey data on KPMG’s site, finds 89 percent of CEOs expect their organisation’s overall headcount to increase over the next three years.
The layoff-heavy mood is not imaginary — but the survey suggests it is the exception inside a broader planning picture where most bosses still expect to employ more people, not fewer, and to fund training rather than pure replacement.
What 1,500+ CEOs told KPMG about headcount
The headline number needs its fine print. Of the 89 percent expecting growth, 62 percent believe the increase will be under 5 percent. That is modest expansion — not an AI-driven hiring boom, and nothing like a mass-replacement scenario. The survey’s own section header puts it plainly: headcount growth continues, but capability is the workforce challenge.
On the skills side, 56 percent of CEOs identify skills gaps as a significant workforce challenge. Upskilling and training employees in AI systems follows at 52 percent, and attracting and retaining talent at 47 percent. In other words, the two leading workforce concerns are both about building people up, not managing them out.
The near-term actions: reskilling budgets, not redundancy letters
Asked what they plan to do over the next 12 months, 51 percent of CEOs say they will communicate openly about AI’s effect on roles, 46 percent plan reskilling and upskilling programs, and 46 percent plan tailored training on how AI can support people in their jobs.
The resistance number is the quiet surprise: only 26 percent of CEOs rate workforce resistance among their serious AI implementation challenges. CEOs are, on the evidence of this survey, less worried about their own staff sabotaging AI adoption than about ethics, cybersecurity, cost and data sovereignty — the implementation challenges they rate highest in the same survey.
Read against the layoff data, not instead of it
None of this erases the layoff cycle. Canva’s restructuring of 1,271 people, Microsoft’s buyout offers and thousands of other cuts are real. But survey data from a different vantage point — what a broad, global sample of chief executives across sectors plans to do with their workforces — has consistently shown a two-track market for at least a year now.
Singularity.Kiwi has tracked that split across recent labour-market data: hiring and firing are running on two separate margins, as we covered in our analysis of AI’s two hiring margins, and workers who carry oversight skills into an AI-heavy workplace can command a premium, per our piece on the labour oversight premium. KPMG’s own Australian arm has published similar findings on responsible AI becoming a competitive weapon that most firms feel unready for.
The 46 percent reskilling figure also pairs with what governments are doing at the entry level. Singapore’s year-long internship expansion is built on the same premise that AI-era roles need structured human training pipelines — our coverage of Singapore’s internship ladder connects that policy to the same skills-gap pressure KPMG’s CEOs report.
The caveats worth holding
Three hedges belong next to these numbers. KPMG is a professional services firm whose consulting business sells the upskilling programmes CEOs say they want — the survey’s optimism about training has a commercial echo. CEO expectations are forecasts, not audited outcomes; plans to grow headcount have a habit of bending when the economy does. And 62 percent of the growth expectation being under 5 percent means many readers would notice nothing at their own workplace for years.
As People Matters’ read on the survey puts it, AI, cybersecurity and talent gaps now dominate what CEOs say they are prioritising — and the talent gap framing assumes people being developed, not dispensed with. KPMG rolled out regional editions of the same survey this week, including its Africa CEO Outlook, with the same emphasis on AI investment alongside skills development.
For job seekers and career changers, the survey’s most useful number may be the least dramatic one: 56 percent of CEOs naming skills gaps as a significant challenge is, functionally, a statement that organisations do not believe they already have the workforce they need — which has historically been the strongest signal that external hires and retrained internal staff have leverage.
FAQ
What percentage of CEOs expect to hire more people because of AI? KPMG’s 2026 Global CEO Outlook found 89 percent of CEOs expect their organisation’s overall headcount to increase over the next three years, though 62 percent expect that increase to be under 5 percent.
How many CEOs are funding AI reskilling programs? In KPMG’s survey, 46 percent of CEOs plan reskilling and upskilling programs over the next 12 months, and the same proportion plan tailored training on how AI can support people in their jobs. 56 percent named skills gaps a significant workforce challenge.
Do CEOs think employees will resist AI? Only 26 percent of CEOs rate workforce resistance as a significant AI implementation challenge in KPMG’s 2026 survey — well below ethics, cybersecurity, cost and data sovereignty concerns.
— CJ Murden, editor of Singularity.Kiwi. Former digital technologies teacher, author of AI-focused books. Writing with a New Zealand focus.
