Contrary to concerns that generative artificial intelligence (AI) will reduce jobs, a survey found that actual hiring increases are more prevalent in businesses. While 77% of companies that adopted AI reported increased hiring, only 46% reported job losses. This suggests that the spread of AI is leading to organizational restructuring and job restructuring, rather than simply downsizing.

According to a joint report by Snowflake and Omdia released in Seoul on March 11, the survey surveyed 2,050 business decision-makers across 10 countries. Among companies experiencing both increased hiring and job losses, 69% said AI had a positive impact on overall employment.

Specifically, 42% of respondents reported that AI created new jobs, while 11% reported only job losses. Thirty-five percent reported both job creation and job loss. Organizations with multiple AI use cases experienced a greater net positive effect on employment. Seventy-five percent of organizations with multiple use cases reported seeing positive effects, compared to only 56% of those in the early stages of adoption. By job category, the net increase effect was most pronounced in IT operations, cybersecurity, and software development.

The problem, apart from profitability, is that the scaling phase remains challenging. While the survey found that companies are seeing an average return of $1.49 for every dollar invested in AI, 96% of respondents said they face challenges during the actual scaling process. The main obstacles cited were breaking down data silos, measuring and monitoring data quality, and preparing data for AI use. Only 7% of organizations reported that more than half of their unstructured data was AI-ready.

Governance issues were also revealed. Fifty-seven percent of all employees and 66% of executives reported using unapproved AI tools, and 60% indicated the need for additional investment in data infrastructure and monitoring software. This suggests that the bottleneck in AI adoption lies not in model performance itself, but in data reliability, controllability, and management systems.

The scope of AI adoption is already expanding across core business processes. Ninety-two percent of early adopters reported a positive return on investment and planned to allocate 22% of their total technology budget to AI over the next year. Utilization was high in IT operations, data analytics, cybersecurity, and software development, with some respondents stating that approximately 48% of all code was generated by AI. The report emphasized that while AI is moving beyond the experimental stage and into operational systems, data readiness and governance capabilities must precede it to lead to sustained results.