On October 15, KPMG released its 2026 CEO Outlook, a survey of more than 1,300 chief executives at large companies, 400 of them in the United States. Two figures in the US results point in opposite directions. 89% of US CEOs expect their headcount to increase over the next three years. 53% plan workforce reductions in some areas over the next two to five.
Both can be true, and the gap between them is the story. A CEO who plans to add 3% net while cutting one function and hiring into another answers yes to both questions.
How big the growth is
The headcount answer is less generous than 89% sounds. Asked how much, 60% expect growth below 5%, 26% expect 6% to 10%, and 2% expect 11% to 25%. Those shares add up to 88%, not 89%; KPMG’s release does not explain the rounding. Either way, the mass sits under 5%. At a company of 10,000, that is fewer than 500 net new seats.
Then the list of what CEOs plan to do with people over two to five years. 86% are redesigning roles, career paths and team structures for human-AI collaboration. 83% are retaining and retraining high-potential staff. 79% are hiring AI and technology talent. 53% are planning reductions in some areas. Reductions are the least common of the four moves, and still a majority.
A trade report on the survey puts the reductions figure at 35% a year ago. If that comparison holds, it is an 18-point jump in twelve months, from a minority of CEOs to a majority.
One limit on the read. KPMG’s release places the 53% in its workforce-and-AI section but does not say the reductions are caused by AI, and it breaks nothing out by function or industry. This is what CEOs say they intend, not what they have announced.
The AI bill
The same CEOs are spending. 84% call AI a top investment priority for the next three years, and 65% will put at least 10% of next year’s capital budget into it. The payback is not immediate: 14% expect returns in 6 to 12 months, 68% in one to three years, 13% in three to five.
On agents, the verdict is mixed. Just 9% call AI agents transformational for their organization so far. 39% report significant efficiency or growth gains, 43% moderate gains from targeted use cases.
Then the line that matters most for jobs. 81% of US CEOs believe rising AI costs will reshape corporate margins more than labor costs will over the next five years, and half say managing AI implementation costs is mostly or very challenging. Read that as a finance statement. The new large line in the budget is AI, labor is no longer the line that moves the margin, and someone has to fund the first from somewhere. Headcount is the usual somewhere.
What the announcements show, and what they do not
Put the survey next to the counted cuts. In September, Challenger recorded 43,281 announced US job cuts and attributed 3,961 of them to AI, about 9%, fifth among reasons. A majority of CEOs say they plan to cut somewhere. The announced tally says few are saying so out loud, and fewer still are blaming AI.
The gap is filled by the quiet mechanism. Marsh raised its Thrive savings target from $400M to $600M on October 15 and said attrition had started in its mid and back office, with no headcount figure attached. The Fed’s Beige Book counted five of twelve districts where firms used attrition or delayed hiring to bank AI productivity. Wells Fargo ran 17,000 fewer people than a year earlier, and Bank of America was down nearly 3,500. None of those was a layoff headline. All of them are consistent with a survey in which 53% plan cuts and 89% still expect a bigger total.
Not every bank is shrinking. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley reported 47,500 and 83,728 people, both up on the quarter. Same industry, one business line contracting while another grows, which is exactly how an 89% and a 53% coexist.
The surveyor is also a data point. KPMG sells AI advisory to these CEOs, and in September it cut about 200 UK advisory roles, AI and cyber specialists among them, citing low attrition. The firm that tells clients to redesign roles is doing the same to its own.
The entry-level line
75% of US CEOs say AI has made them rethink the skills required for entry-level roles, and 81% say it has changed how they train and develop employees. The survey says rethink, not cut. But it lands on a baseline we have already logged: entry-level postings in law and consulting down 35% since 2023. A CEO who rewrites the entry-level job description while planning under 5% growth is not opening a wide front door.
What it means for careers
The exposure is not a job title. It is the shape of net growth. At growth under 5%, there are few new seats, and 79% of CEOs say they are hiring AI and technology talent. Staff in functions that are being redesigned face a different test from a layoff: whether the redesigned role still has their name on it.
The survey names no function, so the direction has to come from adjacent evidence: mid and back-office operations at Marsh, banking operations at Wells Fargo and Bank of America, and the entry-level intake that feeds all of them. The clock is the payback window. If 68% expect AI returns in one to three years, the pressure to show savings peaks in 2027 and 2028, which is when Marsh says most of its program lands.
For anyone planning a move, the useful numbers are the other ones. 60% of CEOs name a skills gap as a top workforce concern and 55% name upskilling on AI systems. Those are the openings in a plan that is otherwise hiring slowly. Watch the 53% next year. If it holds or rises while the 89% falls, the reshuffle will have turned into a shrink.
