America Reacts as AI Takes Over and 48,000 UPS Layoffs

Additional Resources

• Q4 2025 AI Perception and Threat in the Workplace Survey
• Vercel Trained AI Agents Replace Sales Reps
• UPS Cuts 48,000 Jobs

Transcript

Pete Newsome: 0:00

Today’s job market headlines include AI agents replacing salespeople and a 48,000-person downsizing at UPS. But first, US workers believe nearly half their job duties could be replaced by AI. This is according to an October survey where employees estimate that 45% of what they do could be automated. And among managers and executives specifically, the number climbs even higher, all the way to 56% of their responsibilities, which is shocking to me since it shows leaders realize their roles aren’t immune either.

0:31

Also, more than one in four fear AI will threaten their job. 26% of respondents indicated they are highly concerned that AI could endanger their role within a year. Gen Z is the most worried, with 34% concerned about disruption within the next three years. But at the same time, younger workers are the most eager to embrace AI, with 22% of Gen Z saying they have already switched jobs for better AI exposure. These findings point to a workforce in transition, one that sees AI not purely as a threat, but also as a potential career catalyst. In fact, 78% of respondents said they’d consider switching jobs for better AI training or exposure.

1:13

So it’s clear to me that AI isn’t just changing how people work, it’s starting to guide where they work. The most talented individuals will gravitate towards companies that help them learn and leverage AI tools, not avoid them. And this data all confirms what I’ve been hearing from candidates and employers for a while. People don’t fear AI as much as they fear being left out of it. And so the workers who embrace AI tools and the companies that teach them to do that, they’re the ones that are going to win. And the next headline: imagine training an AI on your best salesperson and then replacing a 10-person team with it.

1:44

That’s exactly what Vercel just did. They’re a 9.3 billion cloud development platform that now has one human and one AI agent comprising their inbound sales team. And here’s how they did it according to Business Insider. They had engineers shadow the company’s top performing sales rep for six weeks, documenting their entire process, and then built an AI to replicate all of it. The new AI agent now filters spam, qualifies leagues, drafts personalized replies, personalized being relative, I guess, and routes support requests using OpenAI’s deep research tool. The remaining nine team members weren’t laid off, but reassigned to more complex outbound sales roles. Fircel COO says the company now has six agents running and plans to deploy hundreds more.

2:29

So AI everywhere, it looks like. The goal, she says, isn’t to cut jobs, but to move humans into higher value creative work. That’s a great line, isn’t it? And I see this every time a company claims to have replaced people with AI, there’s always an opportunity to move what aren’t laid-off workers, but they’re repositioned workers into more strategic roles, or as they say, more creative and higher value roles. Which begs the question shouldn’t they have been doing the more strategic high-value stuff already if they were qualified to do so?

3:04

Maybe that’s just me. But I don’t think it’s that simple. As we add more AI into the mix, we’re not going to need as many people. And you can have only so many people in strategic positions. We know that. And every time I post a story like this and comment on it, I’m surprised by the number of people who reply saying AI is just a fad, it’s a bubble, it’s not going to last, this is just much ado about nothing. And that seems just hard to believe to me. We see this happening on an almost daily basis now, and it’s only going to get better and happening happen at increasing speed. So there we are, another company replacing a lot of people with a little AI, and they’re planning to do a whole lot more of it. And then the final headline today UPS has cut 48,000 jobs since last year, with 70% of the layoffs affecting drivers and warehouse workers.

4:00

CEO Carol Tome was quoted in the New York Times, calling it the most significant strategic shift in our company’s history, and the changes we are implementing are designed to deliver long-term value for all stakeholders. Of course, they want to make a lot more money. No surprise there. The company reported $1.3 billion in third quarter profit, down from $1.5 billion a year earlier, but managed to boost revenue per US package by 10%. The stock rose 7% on this news, but still remains down 25% year to date. They said it’s due to that part of the business not being profitable, but when you combine that with Amazon’s new job cuts and FedEx’s decline in share price, I think they’re down about 7% this year. It tells a story to me of consumers buying less, creating a need to ship less.

4:57

And regardless of the cause, 48,000 jobs being lost is a massive cut, especially for those individuals impacted in this difficult job market. So look, we know these companies exist to make a profit. You can’t blame them for doing that. But you can’t also forget that there’s real people impacted by this. Loyal workers, they didn’t see this coming, probably. But anyone who works for corporate America ultimately shouldn’t be surprised that this is how decisions will go down. And you gotta protect yourself against that as best you can.

5:30

So it doesn’t catch you off guard. So those are the stories today. But let’s leave with a fun fact, turn it to a little brighter note, that a face feeler is a real job. It’s someone who’s a sensory scientist paid to feel a person’s face after they’ve used cosmetic products to determine the product’s effectiveness. Sounds kind of gross to me. I wonder if they wear gloves.

5:53

I mean, you couldn’t feel anything if you did. So take something away from the effectiveness, but that’s also kind of a gross thing to do for a living. But I guess there’s lots of people who do that already, dermatologists being one that comes to mind. But I’m sure the face feeler isn’t getting paid quite as much as the average dermatologist. But there we are. Fun fact face feeler is a real job. Feel free to pursue it if you want. Probably can’t be replaced by AI, at least not yet. So thanks for listening today. Please like, subscribe, share with anyone who might be interested. And um, I look forward to talking to you tomorrow.