One in Five U.S. Workers Replaced by AI Is Being Hired Back

Nearly one in five U.S. workers — 19.1% — say their employer replaced them with AI, then asked them to come back, according to new research from talent assessment firm SHL. The firm calls the pattern "AI rebounding," and the survey suggests it comes at a price: 51% of the returnees demanded a substantial pay increase before agreeing to return.

The survey, conducted in June and July, puts the combined U.S.-U.K. figure at 16%. Beyond money, 42% of rehired workers said they would require written guarantees about future job security. Another 40% wanted transparency about how AI would be used in their positions. In plain words: workers who have already been cut once want the terms of their return locked down on paper.

SHL frames the trend as evidence that companies are automating first and assessing later. "Organizations are making fast, sometimes myopic, decisions about their people based on an incomplete picture of what their employees can do with or without AI," Lucy Beaumont, global senior vice president of product and design at SHL, said in a press release. She described the mechanics bluntly: "AI rebounding is what happens when a company automates a role before it has genuinely assessed the human capability inside it. The AI doesn't deliver, the gap becomes obvious, and the business ends up rehiring the same experts they just let go of, at a far greater cost."

What do employers admit went wrong?

A separate Robert Half survey from July found that 32% of U.S. hiring managers whose organizations eliminated positions because of AI later reinstated the same or similar roles. The reasons they gave:

• 40% said the roles required institutional knowledge or context that AI couldn't replace
• 39% cited relationship management
• 39% pointed to increased business demand
• 38% said the roles needed more human oversight and quality control than expected

Those percentages overlap, but the pattern is consistent: the gaps are in judgment, relationships and context — the parts of a job hardest to specify in advance. The caveat is that both surveys rely on self-reported perceptions, from managers as much as from workers.

Which companies walked automation back?

Klarna, the Swedish buy-now, pay-later company, began recruiting human customer service representatives after relying heavily on AI chatbots. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski acknowledged the company had gone too far in its reliance on automation, according to Bloomberg. A Klarna spokesperson told Fortune that human agents were needed "for complex, sensitive cases," and said the company had begun directly hiring a "small number" of high-skilled people into customer service to identify where the "human touch" brings the most value.

Ford moved in the same direction. The automaker hired and promoted 350 experienced engineers in June after AI-powered quality control tools failed to perform as expected. "These engineers carry the hard-earned wisdom of decades of design," a Ford representative told Fortune. The company said AI had contributed to quality improvements — "and that, in tandem with deep technical expertise, is what's needed." Note the careful wording: Ford is not abandoning AI, it is repositioning it as a complement to senior engineers rather than a substitute.

Is AI displacement slowing or accelerating?

Both, at once. Employers cited AI in 121,401 announced job cuts through October this year, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas — more than double the 54,836 AI-related layoff plans announced for all of 2025. Rebounding is growing, but so is the cutting that precedes it.

Younger workers sit at the intersection. A Stanford Digital Economy Lab study found that employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations ran 19% below where it would have been had it grown at the same pace as employment among less-exposed peers. SHL's own data adds a twist: 24% of respondents aged 18 to 24 reported being replaced by AI and later asked back, above the 19.1% U.S. average. Young workers are displaced more often — and rehired more often, though on terms they are now negotiating harder. }