AI Rebounding: 19.1% of U.S. Workers Asked Back to Return

By Grace Kim

SHL found that 19.1% of U.S. respondents said AI had replaced them and their employers later asked them to return, a workplace reversal the talent assessment firm calls “AI rebounding” (an employer reverses an AI-driven replacement).

Across the U.S. and U.K., the June-and-July survey put the rate at 16%. The U.S. result points to an early sign that some employers are discovering limits in replacing people with AI.

What do returning workers want?

• 51% wanted a substantial pay increase before agreeing to return.
• 42% said they would require written guarantees about future job security.
• 40% wanted transparency about how AI would be used in their positions.

Lucy Beaumont, global senior vice president of product and design at SHL, said:

“AI rebounding is what happens when a company automates a role before it has genuinely assessed the human capability inside it. The AI doesn’t deliver, the gap becomes obvious, and the business ends up rehiring the same experts they just let go of, at a far greater cost.”

Beaumont also said organizations were making fast, sometimes myopic decisions about their people based on an incomplete picture of what employees could do with or without AI.

Takeaway: Employers cannot expect displaced workers to return on the same terms they left.

Why are employers restoring roles?

A Robert Half survey from July found that 32% of U.S. hiring managers whose organizations eliminated positions because of AI later had to reinstate the same or similar roles.

Among those managers:

• 40% said the roles required institutional knowledge (company-specific know-how) or context that AI could not replace.
• 39% cited relationship management.
• 39% pointed to increased business demand.
• 38% said the positions required more human oversight and quality control than expected.

Takeaway: The main constraints are context, relationships and oversight, areas where automation has not matched human judgment.

What have Klarna and Ford learned?\n

Swedish buy-now, pay-later company Klarna began recruiting human customer-service representatives after relying heavily on AI chatbots. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski acknowledged that the company had gone too far in its reliance on automation, according to Bloomberg.

A company spokesperson said human agents were needed for complex, sensitive cases. Klarna began directly hiring a small number of high-skilled people into its customer-service process to identify where human interaction could create the most value for customers.

Ford hired and promoted 350 experienced engineers in June after AI-powered quality-control tools failed to perform as expected. The automaker said AI had contributed to quality improvements but still needed experienced engineering teams.

“These engineers carry the hard-earned wisdom of decades of design,” a Ford representative said.

Ford added that AI was important to quality gains only when paired with deep technical expertise.

Takeaway: Klarna and Ford are supplementing AI, not abandoning it.

What do AI-related job cuts show?

AI-linked job cuts are still rising. Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 121,401 announced job cuts through October that employers tied to AI, more than double the 54,836 layoff plans recorded for all of 2025.

A Stanford Digital Economy Lab study put employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in occupations highly exposed to AI 19% below where it would have been if it had grown at the same pace as employment among their less-exposed peers.

SHL found 24% of respondents aged 18 to 24 said AI had replaced them and later asked them back, compared with 19.1% across U.S. respondents. Younger workers therefore reported more reversals even as separate research showed pressure on AI-exposed roles for their age group.

The practical signal: AI-driven cuts continue, while return demands raise the cost of reversing workforce decisions.