The trend: AI is quickly becoming part of retailers’ day-to-day operations.

• Nearly half (45%) of organizations use AI tools several times a week or daily, while another 39% use them weekly or monthly, per an Amperity survey of retail executives. Just 16% aren’t using AI at all.
• Looking ahead, 97% of respondents expect to maintain or increase AI investments over the next year. But fears of mass job losses haven’t materialized: Only 1 in 5 employers (20%) anticipate reducing headcount, while a larger share (26%) actually plan to hire.

The catch: Staff reductions are rarely directly tied to a single technology. More often, they reflect broader cost-cutting in response to economic headwinds. And right now, those headwinds are strong due to a softening labor market, rising inflation, and historically weak consumer sentiment.

• The result has been a surge in layoffs. US employers announced 202,118 job cuts in Q3, the highest Q3 total since 2020, per Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
• So far in 2025, companies have announced 946,426 cuts, a 55% jump from last year and the highest year-to-date total since 2020, when over 2 million were reported.

Our take: AI helps companies do more with less, and some retailers will inevitably use it to trim costs during downturns. But it’s no silver bullet. Retailers that lean too heavily on AI to replace human work risk stumbling instead of saving, and that could prove costly in challenging times.