The Data Is In: AI Is Creating Jobs, Not Killing Them

Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

Eric Siu and Neil Patel

Business, Careers, Marketing

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2026

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Need marketing help? Visit: https://www.singlegrain.com/ and https://npdigital.com/ Want to recruit great marketers? Find them here: https://marketingschool.io/hire Eric pulls up a Financial Times chart showing that the companies spending most on AI are hiring more people, not fewer, and he and Neil use it to take apart the everyone-loses narrative. Neil recounts debating Search Atlas co-founder Monik, who is convinced AI will gut white collar work, and explains why he is seeing the exact opposite across thousands of client companies. They run the historical receipts on radiology, ATMs, and the spreadsheet, argue over whether Google is simply bloated, and look at why HighLevel scaled from 2,000 to roughly 3,000 staff. A detour into an employee who stole from both their companies turns into a lesson on where to spend your attention. The headline fear is loud, but the data underneath tells a different story. Key takeaways ◾Companies with the highest AI adoption are growing headcount, not cutting it ◾Efficiency raises demand, so you end up needing more engineers ◾Every past automation scare created more jobs than it destroyed Chapters 00:00 The FT chart everyone misreads 00:52 We're only seven months in 01:20 The white-collar reduction debate 02:26 Why Google looks bloated 03:27 Efficiency means more engineers 04:14 Do more or charge less 05:04 AI creates abundance, not scarcity 05:49 Radiology, ATMs and spreadsheets 06:34 Who pays if the jobs vanish? 08:13 The AI bubble chart 09:25 Only 12 of 8,000 are AI-pilled 09:55 HighLevel's jump to 3,000 staff 11:33 Most companies only do table stakes 12:14 The employee who stole from both 14:42 The lesson: just move on 15:14 The billionaire who destroys rivals 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗟 Welcome to Marketing School, one of the top business podcasts with over 61 million downloads. Each episode delivers actionable marketing tips and strategies from two entrepreneurs who truly practice what they preach. The show is hosted by Eric Siu, founder of Leveling Up and Single Grain, and Neil Patel, co-founder of Neil Patel Digital and recognized by Forbes as a Top 10 Marketer. 🎙️ Learn More About the Hosts Eric Siu – Leveling Up: https://www.youtube.com/@LevelingUpOfficial Neil Patel: https://www.youtube.com/@neilpatel 📩 Free Resources Ubersuggest: https://www.ubersuggest.com/ Answer The Public: https://www.answerthepublic.com/ ✅ Subscribe for Daily Marketing Insights!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Does your experience with AI sound a little something like this?
0:03.1	You've been prompting for 20 minutes.
0:04.8	The output is polished, confident, and completely useless.
0:08.5	That's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business.
0:11.6	HubSpot's AI works with your actual customer data.
0:14.5	Every interaction and every signal your team has generated over time.
0:17.9	So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it. Check out HubSpot.com, the agenic customer platform for growing businesses. Did you see here, this chart over here, so this is from Financial Times. I'm sure you might have seen it already. Yeah, looks familiar. Okay, so I'm going to read it off right here. So companies that spend more on AI also increase worker numbers, right? So change and headcount by intensity of use. So this is all jobs on the left side over here. You can see that 10.2% average increase for companies that have high AI adoption, right? And then low AI adoption, no change, basically. Now, if you go to the right side, we're talking about entry level, 12% average increase, high AI adoption companies, and then you have low AI adoption,
0:55.9	no change. It kind of went down slightly. And then this has been months since AI adoption,
1:00.0	about 20 months or so. Here's the caveat that I want to add. So a lot of people are saying,
1:03.7	like, well, what's the ROI on this stuff, right? So I just want to keep in mind for everyone
1:08.5	that this stuff didn't really start to take off until December 2025. The last week of December 2025 is when everything went parabolic, at least for me. And so it hasn't even been a year yet. I was just thinking about it this morning. I was like, dude, we're only like seven months in to this, the new step change. And like, it just keeps getting crazy and crazier. So I don't know about you.
1:27.8	Like I'll just speak to my experience first.
1:28.9	I want to hear from yours.
1:30.5	I do.
1:45.5	I am looking for more people. Definitely. Especially on entry level, I'm looking for a little more because they don't come with a lot of bad behaviors, but you do need to experience people too, right? So I, for me, I do look at this as job increase for people that are AI native. Go ahead.
1:46.2	I was having a debate with this with a guy named Monick. right? So I, for me, I do look at this as job increase for people that are AI native. Go ahead.
1:46.1	I was having a debate with this with a guy named Monick, who is a founder or co-founder of Search Atlas,
1:51.8	SEO tool. Oh, yeah. And he believes that AI is going to cause massive work reduction in
2:00.8	white-collar jobs.
2:02.3	All right.
2:02.7	You should define white color.
2:04.2	So white colors like corporate jobs, not someone flipping burgers.
	...

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