New Inflation Threat Emerges

July 13, 2026

A human hand reaching out to a robotic hand, symbolizing interaction between AI and justice.

A new Wall Street survey says AI is flooding into big companies — and the mass layoffs everyone feared simply haven’t shown up.

Story Snapshot

Guggenheim Securities surveyed 150 large-enterprise IT professionals and found AI agent adoption surging — with no wave of mass layoffs to match.
Guggenheim analyst John DiFucci called the “fatal bear case” on software stocks “a hallucination,” upgrading Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Check Point to Buy.
Outside data tells a more complicated story — AI was cited as the top reason for U.S. job cuts for four straight months through June 2026.
Research from MIT and Revelio Labs suggests heavy AI adopters actually hire more people, while light adopters see little change either way.

What Guggenheim Found

Guggenheim Securities surveyed 150 IT professionals at large companies and found AI agent adoption climbing fast. Despite widespread fears that AI would trigger mass layoffs, those surveyed said that hasn’t happened. Analyst John DiFucci put it bluntly in a July 1, 2026 research note: “Valuations imply many software companies will decline into perpetuity because of AI. We don’t believe that to be true. The fatal bear case was a hallucination.”

Guggenheim also upgraded three major software companies — Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Check Point — to Buy. The firm argued that investor worry about AI had pushed stock prices too low, even though there was “limited evidence of severe business disruption.” That’s a significant call. It means Guggenheim believes the market has been pricing in a disaster that isn’t coming.

The Numbers That Push Back

Not everyone sees the same picture. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas tracked 101,743 U.S. job cuts attributed to AI through June 2026. AI was the single most-cited reason for layoffs for four months in a row. That’s a real number, and it deserves real attention — especially for workers in roles that don’t require much technical skill.

A survey reported by Mashable found that over 99% of executives expect AI to cause “at least some workforce reduction” within two years. At the same time, Forrester Research found that 55% of employers who already cut jobs due to AI now regret it. A Gartner survey of executives at billion-dollar companies showed zero financial gains from replacing workers with AI. That’s a warning worth hearing.

Why Both Stories Can Be True

Here’s the key detail most headlines miss: not all AI adoption works the same way. Research from MIT Sloan tracking companies from 2010 to 2023 found that firms using AI heavily grew faster, paid higher wages, and added more jobs. Data from Revelio Labs backs that up — high-intensity AI adopters kept employment levels roughly 10.2% higher than companies that had not yet adopted AI.

$CRM — On July 1, top investment firm Guggenheim upgraded Salesforce’s rating straight from Neutral to Buy, assigning a $228 price target, implying roughly 40% upside from the stock’s price at the time. The analyst argued the market had overpriced risks of AI disrupting legacy… pic.twitter.com/VT8I4qGSQW

— Rich Peter (@peterli34923561) July 6, 2026

The divide seems to fall along how seriously a company commits to AI. Big, strategic adopters tend to grow and hire. Smaller or half-hearted adopters see little benefit — and sometimes cut jobs prematurely. A New York Federal Reserve survey found only 1% of service firms actually let workers go due to AI in the past six months. Meanwhile, Guggenheim estimates AI investment added about one full percentage point to U.S. economic growth in 2025. The honest answer is that AI is reshaping work — but the outcome depends heavily on how, and how deeply, a company chooses to use it.

What to Watch For

There’s a fair reason to read Guggenheim’s findings with some care. The firm upgraded software stocks to Buy at the same time it published bullish survey results. That’s a potential conflict of interest worth noting — Wall Street firms profit when investors feel confident. The survey also covered only 150 IT professionals, focused on AI agents specifically, and may not reflect what’s happening in sales, marketing, or operations departments. No raw data or full methodology has been made public.

Still, dismissing the findings entirely would also be a mistake. The broader research record — from MIT, the Federal Reserve, and Revelio Labs — supports the idea that large, committed AI adopters tend to grow, not shrink. The workers most at risk appear to be those who aren’t using AI at all. Gallup research found that tech workers who rarely used AI were three times more likely to be laid off than regular users. That’s a practical warning for anyone in the workforce right now, regardless of politics.