"AI took the jobs" is doing a lot of convenient work for companies that just wanted to cut headcount

I want to separate two things that keep getting merged: AI actually replacing workers, and AI being the cover story for layoffs that were going to happen anyway.

The pattern that makes me suspicious. A company announces cuts, cites AI efficiency, and in the same breath is reassigning a big chunk of those people to new AI projects and raising its capital spending. If the technology were truly doing the work of the people you let go, you would not need to move most of them sideways into building more of it. "AI" is a cleaner story for investors than "we over-hired, the macro turned, and we are restructuring."

That does not mean AI has zero labor impact. It clearly changes some roles and quietly raises the bar for what one person is expected to output. But the leap from "changes workflows" to "structural mass unemployment is here" is not well supported by what companies actually do with the headcount, versus what they say in the press release.

The reason this matters beyond corporate spin: if policymakers and the public treat AI as the cause, they aim policy at the wrong target and miss the ordinary economic forces doing most of the damage.

So where do you draw the line? How much of the current layoff wave is genuinely AI, and how much is AI getting blamed for a normal downturn because it makes a better headline?