77%. That's the share of organizations that say AI has led to new hires, according to Snowflake's "ROI of Gen AI and Agents 2026" report, released March 10. Compare that to 46% reporting job losses, and the headline writes itself: AI creates more jobs than it kills.
The reality is more complicated than that ratio suggests.
The Same Teams Getting Hired Are Also Getting Cut
Snowflake surveyed 2,050 business and technology leaders across 10 countries who influence their organizations' AI purchasing decisions. The breakdown is worth reading carefully:
- 42% of respondents said AI has only created jobs at their organization
- 11% said AI has only eliminated jobs
- 35% reported both job creation and job losses happening simultaneously
That last group is the most telling. Over a third of companies are hiring and firing because of AI at the same time. Of those experiencing both, 69% said the net effect has been positive. But "positive" is doing a lot of work in that sentence when you look at which departments are affected.
IT operations tops both lists. 56% of organizations reported job growth in IT ops, making it the strongest area for AI-driven hiring. But IT ops also saw the highest rate of job losses at 40%. The same pattern plays out across the board: cybersecurity saw 46% job growth, software development 38%. Meanwhile, customer service and data analytics each reported 37% job losses.
The picture that emerges isn't "AI creates jobs" or "AI destroys jobs." It's that AI reshuffles teams. Companies are cutting roles that involve repetitive analysis and customer interactions while hiring for roles that involve building, securing, and managing AI systems.
The ROI Numbers Behind the Hiring
The hiring surge makes more financial sense when you look at Snowflake's ROI findings. 92% of early AI adopters reported positive returns, with an average ROI of 49%, up from 41% in last year's report. One stat that jumps out: companies report that 48% of their code is now AI-generated.
When nearly half your codebase is written by AI, you need more people who can review, test, secure, and manage that output, not fewer. That explains why cybersecurity and IT operations are growing while more routine roles shrink.
What This Actually Means for Your Career
This study comes from Snowflake, a company that sells data infrastructure and has a direct financial interest in AI adoption looking positive. That context matters. The survey only reached leaders who influence AI purchasing decisions, not the workers being displaced. A survey of laid-off customer service reps would tell a different story.
Still, the underlying pattern is consistent with what other reports from the IMF and World Economic Forum have found: AI is changing the composition of teams rather than simply shrinking them. The jobs growing fastest are the ones that sit between AI systems and business operations: people who can deploy, monitor, secure, and maintain AI tools.
For anyone working in customer support, data entry, or basic analytics, the signal is clear. The roles that involve doing what AI can do are contracting. The roles that involve managing what AI does are expanding. The net number may be positive, but that's cold comfort if you're on the wrong side of the ledger.